


Like a Fish Out of Water

by nyxocity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comedy, Curtain Fic, Dirty Talk, Drama, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-06
Updated: 2012-06-06
Packaged: 2017-11-07 02:35:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 59,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/425939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyxocity/pseuds/nyxocity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU after <i>Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie</i>. During the final battle with the Leviathans, God finally makes an appearance and deigns to intervene. After granting Sam and Dean a few final requests, he 'packs his bags' and takes everything supernatural in existence with him. Left with nothing to hunt, Sam talks a reluctant Dean into settling down in a small town outside of Sioux Falls. Sam seems to want them live a normal kind of life, but between the ridiculous estate sale Sam bought to furnish the house, the arrival of a very human Castiel who's overwhelmed by human emotions, and their quirky, invasive neighbors, it's anything but. Dean's having a difficult time adjusting, convinced everything couldn't be more abnormal until Sam reveals exactly what kind of life he wants to have with Dean. Dean can't deny the part of him that wants it--but can he accept it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  


  
**  
Like a Fish Out of Water   
**   


  


 

Dean has led them to this moment and they have all come willingly, those hunters who remain. Looking at their grim, bloody faces, he wonders for a moment if this is stupid, if he’s only leading them into death. They've stopped singular demons, momentary transgressions, apocalypses, and saved the world one person and battle at a time, like trying to empty the ocean with a spoon. This will wound the leviathans more deeply than any of those battles, and every person who stands with him stands here because they believe that.

There are others who should be here, but he doesn’t have time to grieve for them. Not anymore.

The world roars with the battle-cries of leviathans and the foul army of monsters they’ve brought with them, and he can hear their eager mews as they leap forward to taste human flesh with their sharp claws and sharper teeth. It's a frightening sound, a cacophony of death and blood and mutilation, and it's the best sound he's heard in a long time. Blood sings in his veins and the sword feels good in his hands; natural, perfect. Every sense is alive with awareness, every nerve tingles, every muscle coils and poises on the edge of unleashing the fury that's been building in his bones for the last six years or more. It's been too long since he fought like this.

The creature above him flaps its mighty wings with the sound of thunder, sluicing down rain in heavy gouts, and then it swoops down in a single smooth motion, arcing gracefully through the air as it comes for him.

He runs away, leading it, and then makes his stand. He waits, willing his instincts to quiet their screaming, willing his legs to stay rooted to the spot. He waits as it speeds toward him like an arrow, the sky seeming to widen beyond its normal dimensions to allow the creature passage. It opens its foul mouth, and he can smell rancid death on its breath, taste mortality and the faint scent of ozone, and still he waits. Milliseconds stretch out like eternity, each one straining like tiny horses beneath his skin.

He ducks under the seeking teeth at the last second and slices into the dragon's neck. The sword barely pierces its thickly scaled hide, and he shoves it deeper, seeking the tender flesh below the chin. Black ichor sprays and blurs his vision, but not so much that he can't see the single, malevolent red eye that turns toward him.

He doesn't know if he's going to live or die, and right now, he doesn't care.

This is what he was made for.

Rain pours and monsters howl, and the carcasses of the dead choke the ground with their sheer numbers. Among their bloody and broken bodies, the battle rages at a fevered pitch. Swords slice, teeth rend, axes fall, battle-cries ringing out with the sounds of combat and the cries of the dying. The hunters keep fighting, and on wobbly, battle-weary legs, some of them make their stand atop the hulking carcass of the dragon Dean brought down. Dean’s feet slip on bile and blood, and the ground itself has turned a deep crimson that even the heavy rain can’t wash away. 

He spots Garth go down, teeth of a leviathan shredding through his shirt, leaving his stomach a bloodied wreck. Dean lops off the thing’s head, hoping the hunters carrying chemicals are keeping up with their job of dissolving leviathans and dismembering them.

Long minutes pass, and more hunters fall, and Dean feels Garth begin to slip from his grasp. He glances around, sees Sam swaying on his feet, sees Tamara go down beneath a mass of bodies, coming out screaming and bloodied, and he knows this is it. They can't last much longer. They've done almost all the damage here that they can. Even if he wanted to leave now, pull them out and try to save their lives, he knows he can't. They're surrounded, and the mass of monsters, though smaller than it was at first, is still huge, enough to kill them all easily.

“You and me, Sam,” he says, pressing his back closer against his brother’s.

“Just like always,” comes the answer.

He stands over Garth and defends the hunter’s unconscious body, knowing he can't hold the monsters off for longer than a few more seconds. They press in from all sides, and he feels his spine begin to fuse against Sam's with the weight of bodies bearing down on them. Sam grunts in surprise as something cuts into him, and Dean feels the teeth of a leviathan scrape against his throat. He can’t move his sword arm, so he closes his eyes instead, reaches for his brother’s hand, and it’s not something he’d ever do any other time, but he does it now, and he doesn’t care. Sam’s fingers close around his, squeezing Dean’s in a death grip, and this is it, and they both know it—

Suddenly, the entire battle comes to a screeching halt, creatures backing away so rapidly that Dean and Sam almost fall on top of each other as the pressure against them relents. Something is glowing by his feet, and he looks down to see Garth suffused in blinding, bright white light that burns his retinas like the fire of the sun.

When it recedes, Garth's back on his feet, healed and whole, looking at his belly as if he's never seen it before. “What the hell just happened? Not that I'm complaining.”

Dean's left speechless, and he opens his mouth as if some sort of explanation might tumble out. But it's someone else all together who answers for him.

“This is finished.”

An old man stands near them, plain wooden cane clutched in one hand, his white hair, mustache and short beard smartly styled, a forbidding glare radiating from his dark eyes. 

Dean blinks a few times, trying to make sense of this turns of events—and Jesus Christ, is that old man Christopher Lee?

The leviathans and other monsters are actually _whimpering_ as they back away in a widening circle. 

Christopher Lee makes an impatient gesture with one hand, and the leviathans seize, screaming, oily black essence trailing from their meatsuits’ mouths and noses before it catches fire, flames extinguished quickly by the whipping wind and rain.

The de-possessed humans and remaining monsters run then, fleeing the scene. The hunters who are still standing remain for a moment, and then the old man makes another gesture, and they vanish, leaving only Sam and Dean. The rain begins to die out, clouds breaking up above their heads.

“They’re safe,” Christopher Lee—and Dean’s now 100% sure that this is Christopher Lee—says. “I sent them home with the same message I’m about to give you.”

“Saruman?” Sam breathes in confusion at Dean’s side.

“ _You_ know who I am, don’t you?” Christopher Lee asks, his dark, beady eyes fixing on Dean’s.

And yeah, Dean guesses he does.

“So Dracula is God now?” Dean asks, taking a step closer to the older man. 

“Always a smartass, Dean,” God remarks, clucking his tongue ruefully. “And not even a thank you.”

He says something else, but Dean’s barely listening—can barely hear him—he can feel fury surge through him, that same bloodlust he’d felt at the beginning of the battle, rage of the last six or more years rising up inside.

“ _Thank you_?” Dean demands, incredulous. “ _Now_ you show up? All the dying we’ve done, me going to hell, Sam going into the pit, our mom, our dad, our grandparents, and what? We’re supposed to be _grateful_ that you finally got tired of banging hookers in Rio? Ran out of blow? Maybe your skeeball arm finally gave out?” Dean spits, stepping up to the old man.

“Dean.” Sam’s voice is a warning, and Dean hesitates, annoyed, looking at his brother.

Sam cuts his eyes sideways at Dean, his mouth moving in a whisper in the same direction, as if it might help keep the Almighty Himself standing less than five feet away from hearing him. “He might be a dick, but he’s still _God_.”

The amount of fucks Dean gives can’t be measured, since they don’t exist.

“You’ve been useful, Dean, you and your brother, so I’m inclined to indulge you. But don’t push your luck. Be grateful that I’ve come at all.”

And then God sits down—actually sits down on the back of a dead creature that has a mass of tentacles where its legs should be—and pulls the shoe from his foot, gnarled fingers rubbing the sole.

“This vessel’s getting old,” God says, and shakes his head, fingers rubbing vigorously. “It was better when you humans died young. I set it up that way for a reason. But you always think you know better, with your science and this whole “the singularity” nonsense.” He grumbles most of the words, speaking more to himself than either Sam or Dean, and admittedly, they’re both too stunned by this strange turn of events to have anything, useful or otherwise, to contribute.

Before Dean can find his tongue, God’s on his feet again, shoe back in place and standing solidly as he regards them severely beneath the clearing sky.

“The message I have for you is this: As of today, humanity starts over at square one.”

Dean squints, tilting his head as he thinks that through. So, what? Leviathans destroyed, demons back in hell, angels back in heaven?

“You mean you’re hitting the restart button?”

“No. I mean it’s over, Dean. I’m leaving, and I’m taking them all with me: the angels, the demons, the monsters, every last thing on this planet that isn’t human.”

“What?” Dean asks, frowning as he lifts his hands from his sides in confusion. “You’re just gonna… pack them in your suitcase and take them all to the hotel at the end of the universe?”

“Alpha Centauri’s nice this time of year,” God says with an enigmatic smile.

And floored as Dean is that God has read Douglas Adams, he’s still too fucking astounded by what God is _telling_ him to really take full notice of that part. 

“You’re saying…”

“I’m saying you’re both out of business. I’m saying tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life, or one of those other clichéd bullshit lines they sell in the Hallmark stores these days,” God shrugs. “It’s done.”

“You’re… just going to abandon humanity?” Sam asks, like he can’t believe it.

God throws up a hand, waving it through the air. “I abandoned humanity a long time ago. I’ve got a lot of other spoons in the pot, if you know what I mean. Besides, humanity stopped needing me around the time they learned to make weapons and fire. You’re all fucked up,” he adds with emphasis, “no doubt about it. But I did make you in my image,” he goes on, shrugging again, “so I don’t know why I expected you to be any other way.”

Dean’s pretty sure Sam’s jaw is about to fall off its hinges.

“You’ll probably be fine,” God says with a tilt of his head. “You have been this long.”

Dean, on the other hand, is about to have a heart attack and die of not-surprise. “Then why come back at all?”

“Because I made you in my image.”

“Vanity?” Dean asks, unimpressed.

“You weren’t going to win this time, Dean,” God says, beady eyes fixing on Dean’s with a ferocity that makes Dean take a step back. “But if you’re unhappy, I could always bring the Leviathans back and let this play out.”

Dean keeps his mouth shut and decides to take a pass on that.

God holds his gaze on Dean for a moment longer, and then nods almost imperceptibly. 

"Dean," Sam says, breathless. "My head... Lucifer's gone."

"What?"

"He's really gone." Sam's eyes are wide and relieved and Dean doesn't understand how this is possible.

"A side effect of my healing everyone on the battlefield," God says. "You're welcome."

It's so huge Dean can't process it right now, and he doesn't have time, because Dean can sense God readying to leave, see it in the motions the old man makes as he steps back, cane in hand.

God’s about to leave the planet forever, and he’s got maybe a few seconds to get what he can out of this deal.

“We want a few things, before you go,” Dean interjects.

“I saved you all. Healed your brother. I’m taking everything supernatural from the planet, giving you a normal life, and you have the nerve to ask for more?” God asks, thunder in his tone.

“We’ve been fighting your battle for you for years now. We stopped Lucifer, the apocalypse. A few things you can make happen with a wiggle of your eyebrows? I’m thinking you can spare us that much.”

God’s expression suggests he doesn’t agree with Dean in the slightest, but he pauses, calculating as he looks and Dean and folds his arms across his chest. “Go on. I’m intrigued.”

“Bring Bobby back,” Dean says, nearly in unison with Sam.

“Impossible,” God shakes his head. “I have him running the call center in heaven. He’s irreplaceable.”

Dean blinks a few times, taking that in. It’s maybe one of the craziest things he’s ever heard—so ridiculous that for a long few seconds, Dean can’t even wrap his head around it. He tries to imagine Bobby at the center of heaven, baseball cap on his head, wireless receiver clipped around it, talking into the microphone and flicking switches on a gigantic call board. 

“Bobby… is running the call center in heaven?” he asks, like he’s sure God is fucking with him.

“Did a hell of a job running your hunter’s call center, didn’t he?”

Dean can’t argue with that. But still… “Really? _Bobby_?”

“I can’t close down heaven and hell, Dean. Human souls still need somewhere to go after they die. And I need people to make sure things keep running. No deal.”

“Wait,” Sam says.

God looks at him, brows drawing together in a frown.

“We have something you might want.”

This is news to Dean. What the hell could they have that _God_ would want?

“It’s an amulet,” Sam goes on when God raises his eyebrows with same incredulity Dean feels. “One that can locate you.”

Dean’s eyes focus on Sam, narrowing, his heart doing an odd, double thump in his chest. _The_ amulet? His amulet? Sam has it?

Sam looks momentarily chagrined and slightly guilty, averting his eyes from Dean’s, and then he kneels down, unzips his small pack—

Brilliant light explodes from the opening, nearly blinding Dean for an instant. When he moves his hand from shielding his eyes, blinking and squinting, he can see the amulet-- _his_ amulet, part of him insists—dangling from Sam’s fingers.

God sighs in exasperation when he sees it. “I made it so my creations could find me and it’s been nothing but a pain in the ass ever since.”

“Wait,” Dean says, putting the pieces together. “So every time someone used it to try to find you… you knew?”

“Damned thing might as well be a cosmic pager,” God agrees nodding, eyes still sizing up the charm dangling in the air.

Well, it’s not like he didn’t already know God’s been mostly ignoring the phone for the last thousand years. He just didn’t know it was in the literal sense.

“Not the kind of thing you wanna leave behind when you’re going on permanent vacation,” Sam—who’s apparently given up on being shocked by God’s indifference—prompts.

“You think you can trade for human souls like Pokemon cards?” God asks, reproachful, fingers tugging his beard.

There’s a pause, and Sam looks doubtful, almost guilty again.

“Ah, who’m I kidding?” God says with a shrug. “That’s the way it’s always been done. Fine. You can have him.”

“Thank you,” Sam manages before God snatches the amulet from his hand.

The relief Dean feels over getting Bobby back, the uncertainty he’s feeling about Sam trading his amulet, the persisting major disbelief that any of this is even happening all threaten to overwhelm Dean for a moment. He shoves it all to the back of his mind—they’ve still got business here.

“Three more things,” Dean says, stepping up between them.

“This isn’t a game show, Dean,” God tells him, voice crackling dangerously.

“Small things,” Dean adds, hoping they are. He wouldn’t have thought Bobby would be a big deal either, but… “One, Adam gets a free pass from the pit to heaven.”

“Reasonable,” God nods. “Done.”

“Two, bring Jimmy Novak back and send him home.”

God’s head sways back and forth for a second. “Also reasonable. Done.”

“Three, bring Castiel back and make him a real boy.”

Now God pauses, looking at Dean with an expression Dean can’t quite interpret. “You want him to be human?”

“Yes. Just… make sure he looks like… Cas.”

“You want him to look like Jimmy Novak?” God asks, head cocking slightly as he looks at Dean.

“Yes,” Dean answers, thinking how weird it’d be for Cas to look like anyone else.

“And if he doesn’t wish to become human?”

“Pretty sure he’d rather be human and stay here than go anywhere with you.”

God nods as if allowing that Dean may be right. “I’ll present him the choice. But Dean…” a strange smile curves the corners of God’s lips. “Remember that you asked for this.”

“Enjoy your lives, Dean, Sam.” 

And so saying, the old man takes up his sack and his cane, tapping the end of polished wood against the bloody ground.

“Don’t forget to write,” Dean calls after him.

God vanishes without a backward look, and Dean rolls his eyes, shaking his head.

“That just happened, right?” Sam asks after a moment, blinking against the sunshine.

Dean takes a look at the carnage on the battlefield, watches as the bodies begin to disintegrate, pieces of curled black ash peeling from the dragon’s dead body and drifting on the breeze. The sun’s out in full effect, sky perfectly blue as if it hadn’t been pouring rain like a monsoon ten minutes ago.

“Take a look,” he says, holding up his hands to indicate the world around them. “Besides, you wouldn’t have imagined God as the world’s biggest douchebag. Me, on the other hand…”

“Yeah, I should’ve seen that one coming,” Sam agrees.

They wait a few minutes, until the grass around them is as green and empty as it was when they first arrived here, and then they wait a few minutes more.

Finally, Sam looks at Dean and says, “Guess you should have specified we wanted Bobby and Cas delivered here, huh?”

Dean cuts his eyes in the direction God disappeared, gritting his teeth.

There’s an honest to goodness, no shit, double-rainbow hanging in the sky, shimmering like the world’s biggest ‘fuck you’.

“Asshole,” Dean mutters.

 

 

They head in the direction of Rufus’ cabin since that’s the only link to anything they have left of Bobby. 

They stop along the way to ditch their clunker and switch back over to the Impala, and the grin on Dean’s face when he slides behind the wheel, into the smell of leather and oil, is about a hair’s breadth from being the same one he gets when he watches really awesome, filthy porn.

“Hey, baby,” he says, still grinning as he runs a hand across her dash. 

He takes a long moment to just let the feel wash over him, muscles in his back unwinding with the familiar fit of her seat against him, his hands flexing around the steering wheel.

“Could you… please not do that?” Sam says in a tight voice that suggests Dean has crossed some kind of line.

“Come on, Sam. Tell me you’re not the least bit happy to have her back.”

Sam thinks for a second and then tilts his head in a way that says, “yeah, maybe, okay”, and Dean can see Sam relax fractionally, too, leaning back against the seat.

They share a brief smile, though Sam’s enthusiasm is nowhere near Dean’s, and then Dean starts the engine, listening to her purr for a few seconds before he shifts her into gear.

 

 

Bobby’s there, sitting on the porch like he’s been waiting for them, hat on his head, a beer clutched in his hand.

Dean hugs him so hard he feels like something’s going to crack in his chest, and for just a second, he feels like thanking God after all.

 

 

They stay for a week, watching game shows and Latino soap operas and black and white movies. Bobby cooks for them, grumbling and telling them to get him this or that, and does he look like their goddamned chef? Dean and Sam both get him whatever he wants without a single word in return, smiling the whole time, which makes Bobby act even grumpier, even though they can hear the way he’s trying not to smile the whole time.

They spend evenings on the porch, enjoying the sunsets and the feel to the air that says summer is just around the corner, drinking beer and playing cards. In between, they search the internet for any signs of Castiel or things going bump in the night, but don’t come up with much. 

At the end of the week, Bobby announces he’s had enough of taking care of them and is heading back to Singer Salvage to rebuild.

“Say hi to Sheriff Mills for me,” Sam tells him with a knowing grin. 

They say goodbye in the cabin driveway, and wave as Bobby’s car kicks up gravel. Then they get in the Impala and set out into the world to see firsthand just how much of the supernatural God took with him.

 

 

Eight weeks later they turn a corner in Chicago, and Dean finally has to admit that God made good on his promise. They’ve only managed to find three leads, and all of them have ended in humans being psychotic assholes.

The monsters, the demons, ghosts, they’re all gone. Completely and totally _gone_. 

It’s another week before Sam looks over at him and finally says, “They’re really gone, Dean.”

Dean can hear the unspoken, “What do we do now?” so loud that Sam might as well have said it.

Fuck if he knows. He wasn’t built for this. Yeah, he spent a year with Lisa and Ben half-ass pretending he wasn’t a hunter, but he still was. It’s what he _is_. His fingers are itching for his gun, for the holy water, for the salt, for everything in the armory of the Impala’s trunk.

He knows how to fight monsters, knows how to save the world. Moves and rules and knowledge burned into his brain, guided by pure instinct.

He doesn’t know how to just _live_.

He doesn’t know how to do this.

 

 

They drive for a few more days before Sam finally turns to him inside a motel room one day, and asks how long they’re going to do this.

“What are we supposed to do, Sam?” Dean snaps, irritated as he yanks the zipper closed on his bag. “Buy a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence? Get a dog, adopt a couple of kids? Where are we gonna get the money to do that? I’ve got construction worker skills at best, and you’re a law school drop-out. And oh, yeah, how many brothers our age live together?”

“Okay,” Sam says after a moment, “I’m still stuck on the part where we’re adopting kids.”

Dean scowls, throwing out a hand. “You know what I mean. That whole idea… that’s not _our_ kind of life.”

“What is our kind of life, now, Dean?”

Drifting across the countryside in their car, living out of motels on food that comes in paper and plastic wrappers, all of it paid for by credit card fraud. That’s been their life so far. There’s no reason it has to end.

Except that there’s no reason to do it anymore. The strain between them is palpable, neither of them with anything to do, both of them on edge, waiting for _something_ to happen.

Dean doesn’t have an answer for Sam, and he can feel his brother there, waiting, can almost see him, standing, arms folded across his chest as he stares at Dean’s back, willing Dean to tell him what else there is.

Dean’s hand closes in a fist around the handle of his backpack, teeth gritting together. Dad, monsters, demons, angels, heaven and hell all the way through leviathans, and he’d never had time to think about any of this. Never thought there’d be a day when he’d _have_ to think about this.

He leaves Sam without an answer, getting up and walking to the bathroom. The click of the door shutting behind him sounds loud in his ears, and he pushes it away, stripping out of his shirt and moving to turn on the shower.

The water hits his shoulders in hot spikes that can’t drive out Sam’s voice.

_What is our kind of life now, Dean?_

After he’s done, dried off and mostly dressed again, he opens the bathroom door, steeling himself for Sam waiting for him, maybe lying on the bed watching TV, or hunched over his laptop at the table by the window.

Darkness greets him, along with blessed silence. Sam’s asleep; face down on his bed, one foot with a sock still clinging to it sticking out from underneath the covers, across the edge of the mattress into open air.

If they ever do get a house of their own, Sam’s going to need a bigger bed.

Dean pushes the thought from his mind, and falls between the sheets of his own bed.

 

 

He wakes in the morning to Sam reciting something in Latin and sits up in alarm, sheets tangling around his legs before he kicks free of the bed, on his feet, gun in hand.

Sam stops speaking and looks up from the table at Dean, eyebrows riding high on his forehead. His expression is primarily made up of, “What the hell is wrong with you?” with “Dude, why are you in your underwear?” taking a close second, and a pretty good helping of, “Have you finally lost it?” on the side.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Dean snaps, self-conscious and annoyed. “You were the one reciting Latin. Killing something while you’re doing that is practically Pavlovian.”

Sam spares Dean a slight smirk, shakes his head, and then he looks back down at the book spread open in front of him. “I’ve been trying to cast spells.”

“Why?” Dean asks, putting the gun down, because clearly Sam’s not being attacked by anything.

“To see if one of them might work.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Dean asks, shooting his brother a glance as he tugs on his jeans from the day before. He stops in mid-tug as it hits him, eyes going wide. “He took magic, too?”

Sam nods, rolling his upper lip under his teeth. “Which probably means he took the Native American earth spirits, the pagan Gods, the other Gods, _everything_.”

“Can he even do that?” Dean demands, jeans still hanging around his thighs, forgotten. “Just… take away other people's religious figures?”

“He made the planet,” Sam shrugs, glancing up. His eyes linger for a moment on Dean’s half dressed body, and then he quickly looks away. 

Dean pulls his jeans up the rest of the way, not bothering to zip them before he sits down hard on the bed. He lets his head fall forward, running his hands through his hair, fingers gripping the shape of his skull lightly for a moment.

“Motherfucking asshole,” he mutters and exhales as he lets go, eyes meeting Sam’s. 

“I guess we really are out of business,” Dean says, and immediately hates himself for presenting Sam with a perfect opportunity to revisit last night’s conversation.

Sam just nods, and Dean is more grateful than surprised that Sam doesn’t ask him again what they’re supposed to do, because Dean still has no fucking idea. Dean’s still wrestling with the idea that they’re living in a 100% normal world. It doesn’t seem possible.

Instead, Sam—who usually lives about three counties over from “flogging a dead horse” in the land of “flogging the stain of something that used to be alive once, maybe"—actually changes the fucking subject. 

“Let’s go visit Bobby,” Sam says.

It’s not until much later, looking back, that Dean will realize Sam didn’t change the subject at all.

 

 

Singer Salvage doesn’t look all that much different on the way in, until they turn the corner of a twisted pile of metal and see the bare bones of wood sticking up from concrete poured into the ground. There’s a trailer set off to one side of the space cleared around the skeleton of a house, just past Bobby’s old beat up pick-up, and Dean pulls the Impala up nearby.

Sheriff Mills is there, sitting on a white and green lawn chair, flipping a pair of steaks on the Smokey Joe outside the trailer, smoke curling up out of the little black grill. When she looks up and sees them, she greets them both with a bright smile.

“Sheriff Mills,” Dean says with a nod, smiling back.

“Jody,” she corrects, wiping her hands on her jeans as she stands up.

The door to the trailer opens and Bobby steps out, two beers caught between his fingers. A smile creases his face as he sees them, and then he lifts the hand with the beers and says, “Guess I oughta get a couple more.”

 

*

 

Bobby manages to find a couple of steaks for them, too, and when they protest, Jody insists it’s no trouble at all, and Bobby leans in, kissing her on the cheek. The look she gives him in return makes Dean smile, and when he looks at Sam, he sees Sam wearing the same happy expression.

Dean still isn’t exactly sure what they’re doing here, but it feels good, feels familiar and comfortable settled in between the piles of junk tipping toward the sky, smoke rolling up out of the Smokey Joe, smell of grilling meat filling the air, beer in his hand and all that’s left of his family around him.

After they’re done eating, Jody wants to hear everything about what happened with God. While Dean’s telling her exactly what an asshat God is, he notices Sam and Bobby leaning up against one corner of the trailer, Sam’s hand wrapped around a bottle of beer as he talks to Bobby, Bobby listening intently. He wonders for a second what they’re talking about, and then Jody hits him with another question.

By the time he’s finished telling the story, the sun is sinking low in the sky, the sky turning purple above them. 

They decide to stay at a motel nearby since Bobby’s trailer is the size of a molecule. 

 

When Dean wakes in the morning, eyes fluttering open to the golden rays of sunlight filling the room, he can hear fingertips tapping against a keyboard.

Sam’s hunched over his laptop, sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtains, casting him mostly in shadow, as intent on the screen as he’d ever been in the middle of a case.

“You found something?” Dean asks, sitting up.

“I did,” Sam nods.

“A case?” Dean shoves up from the bed, almost excited.

“No. I found some houses. Not too far from where we are now. Nice places, small town.”

Dean freezes halfway to his bag and a fresh change of clothes. “Tell me they’re haunted.”

“Sorry.”

Dean doesn’t need to be able to see his brother’s face clearly to know what expression Sam’s wearing. “Sam.”

“Dean…” Sam sighs at his tone, like _Dean’s_ the one that’s being unreasonable. “Bobby knows a real estate agent that’ll help us out, get us a good deal.”

Fine. “And how are we gonna do that, Sam, huh? We don’t have _any_ history on paper except our birth certificates, our criminal records and oh, right, our _death_ certificates,” he adds emphatically.

“What do you think I’ve been working on for the last couple weeks?” Sam asks. “Birth certificates for Dean Smith and Sam Wesson. Social security numbers, work, credit, bank and residence histories, a few driving and parking violations on each of our records. We’ve even got Bobby to cover the calls for all our references. We’ve got it all, Dean. We’re set.”

“You… can do all that?” Dean asks in disbelief.

Sam shoots him a look that conveys how disappointed he is in Dean’s lack of faith in him. It also reeks of “duh”. “Not only that, but I managed to secure enough money to get us through the first six months while we look for jobs.”

Dean stands there for a minute, speechless, and then he shakes his head with finality. “No.”

“What else are we gonna do?” Sam asks, exasperated. “Live in motels forever? Stay with Bobby and Jody in Bobby’s new place?”

“We’ll figure something out.”

Sam leans forward in his chair, hazel eyes tightening on Dean. “Why are you fighting this so hard, Dean?”

Dean doesn’t really have an answer for that.

“Come on,” Sam says, turning his puppy dog eyes on Dean. “At least come look at the houses. What can it hurt?”

“No, Sam. We are _not_ doing this. Absolutely _not_.”

“Fine,” Sam sighs, scowling. “Just look at one, then. You can live through one.”

When Dean opens his mouth to reply, Sam cuts him off.

“For me, Dean.”

Dean snaps his mouth shut and sighs. He guesses it really can’t hurt. “Just one.”

 

 

It’s a small town, like Sam said, about twenty-five minutes outside Sioux Falls, fields and fields of wheat surrounding it.

Dean grudgingly has to admit to himself that it’s a nice looking neighborhood. The houses are on the small side, but they’ve got a good amount of space and mesh fences between them. The lawns are well-trimmed and green, some of them boasting flower beds around the edges of the houses.

They drive down Meadowlark Lane, Sam counting down numbers until they come to 1314 and Dean slides the Impala up against the curb. The house has yellow siding with white shutters and trim, a wooden front porch with a swing bench, plain metal rods of a wind chime dangling high above the porch railing. A real wind chime, he notes, looking at the thick rods, the kind that don’t just tinkle like a bad movie sound effect. They clink together with real, faint music as Dean and Sam get out of the car.

“Well, aren’t you two handsome?” chirps the real estate agent, meeting them as they get out of the car. She’s somewhere around forty, dark hair pulled back from her face, curls trailing down to her shoulders, a silver barrette pinned on one side. She’s pretty, despite the garish red lipstick she’s wearing, her dark brown eyes almost the color of her hair, crow’s feet just barely creasing the edges of her eyes as she smiles at them both.

“I’m Daisy Wilson,” she says, introducing herself as she holds out a hand to Sam. Sam reaches out and takes her hand, smiling back, introducing himself and Dean.

“Well, come on then,” she says breezily, turning to lead the way. “Let’s have a look shall we?”

“You’re just gonna love this place,” she adds, looking over her shoulder at them as she smiles even wider.

“There a reason there are bars on the windows and door?” Dean asks. He’d seen them when he’d seen the rest of the house, had been waiting for Sam to ask, but since Sam didn’t…

“It’s got what you’d call character,” Daisy replies, Dean’s question glancing right off her cheerfulness as she turns the key in the lock on the iron door over the screen. “The former owner was a war veteran. He liked to keep things locked down. We intend to have them removed, of course, but this place isn’t even listed, yet. It’s only been a few days since he passed.”

“Did he die in the house?” Dean asks, and Daisy pauses with the key in her hand halfway to the doorknob.

“It was a natural death. Old age. And anyway, you’re not worried about ghosts, are you?” she adds with a grin.

No. He really isn’t. Not anymore.

Daisy shows them the house, and on the surface it’s like any other house. They enter a small foyer off the living room, and there’s a closet to one side, a half bathroom on the other before it opens up, living room straight ahead to the left, kitchen off to the right, both rooms connecting to the dining room by open, arched doorways that connect all three in a circle. At the far end of the living room, just to the side of the doorway to the dining room, there’s a set of stairs leading up to a narrow hallway with doors on the left, a bedroom first, a bathroom in the middle, and another bedroom at the end of the hall. Down in the kitchen, there’s a door leading to the back porch and the fairly big backyard. Sam asks her questions, and it’s all about as normal as it gets.

But then, just off the kitchen, there’s a door inside the short passage leading to the dining room that opens to the basement. It’s got reinforced iron plating on the inside of the door, every wall in the basement covered in it, and then shelves and shelves of canned goods, bottled water, books and video tapes and a couple of medical kits. There’s an old couch that smells faintly of disuse set in front of an ancient TV set up on cinderblocks, VCR attached to it, a single, made-up bed set against the far wall.

“We haven’t had a chance to renovate down here, yet,” Daisy says, hopeful and apologetic. “But look at the potential of the room, imagine it wide open, without the shelves and--”

She breaks off, watching as Dean kneels down next to a particular piece of iron plating, running his fingers over the rivets.

“What was the owner’s name?” Dean asks.

Daisy hesitates, seeming thrown. “Dale. Dale Johnston.”

He exchanges a glance with Sam, and they both know this was the house of a hunter, or at the very least, someone who was aware of their world.

“He lived here alone?”

“Yes,” Daisy answers.

Dean likes Dale, likes him a hell of a lot for building this room, which Dean is sure has sigils and warding symbols carved into every surface just behind the iron plating. Iron bars on all the windows and doors. Dean would bet there are secret symbols buried everywhere in this house, salt sunk into its bones.

It’s not like they need the protection. There’s no reason they’d ever need this panic room. But somehow, it makes him feel comfortable, welcomed.

Dean has no idea how to feel about any of this, but if they’re going to have to live somewhere…

“So,” Daisy says in a too-bright, almost singsong tone. “What do you think?”

He glances up at Sam, and Sam takes in his look, nods once.

And that’s how they end up living in a house in Ernest, South Dakota.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

  


 

On the day they move in, they don’t bring much with them into the house, just the usual, clothes and other necessities packed into their bags, arsenal in the trunk of the Impala left there, parked in the garage.

Dean’s just setting down his bag inside the living room, looking around the empty room, thinking about how they’re going to have to fill it, when he hears something massive pull up in the driveway outside.

Dean walks to one of the windows closest to the driveway, frowning as he looks through it.

It’s a truck, “Your Life In Motion” printed clearly on its side, and there are already men exiting the front seat, opening the back of the truck. They’re unloading boxes, and furniture, and… what the fucking fuck?

“Sam? Why are there guys unloading furniture in our driveway?”

“What?” Sam asks, shrugging. “Who moves into a new house without _stuff_?”

“But we don’t _have **stuff**_.”

“I… maybe bought an entire estate sale,” Sam says, shoulders lifting almost apologetically. “For appearances.”

Dean blinks at his brother, then watches, speechless as the movers unload box after box, piece after piece of furniture. They have an entire living room’s worth of furniture, dining room, too, double beds and dressers for each of their rooms. But the real revelation comes when they set boxes down in the kitchen, marked with words like pots and pans and utensils.

They’re actually doing this. They’re moving into a dead man’s house, with another dead person’s belongings filling it.

“Do you even know what’s in these boxes?” Dean asks, poking at one of them.

“Not really,” Sam says with a shake of his head, shrugging. “Mostly I made sure there was enough furniture.”

“Vintage mini-spoon collection?” Dean reads off the side of the box, fixing Sam with a reproving look.

Sam raises his brows and lifts his hands. “It was short notice.”

Dean snorts and shakes his head, covering his mouth with one hand. “Oh, yeah. This is _so_ normal.”

 

*

 

When the movers are gone, Dean circles the thing they left in the middle of the living room, just in front of the dark wood coffee table that separates it from the television on the other wall. It’s got tall, wooden legs, surface covered in cream colored cloth, back stapled with perfectly aligned buttons. It looks… sort of like a couch, but it’s not like any kind of couch he’s ever sat on.

“What the fuck kind of couch is this?” Dean finally asks.

“It’s a _settee_ ,” Sam sighs.

“It’s a fucking _grandma couch_ ,” Dean informs him. 

“It’s something to sit on.”

“It smells like Geritol.”

“Dean--”

“No,” Dean says, backing off and holding up his hands, “I’m sure it’ll go great with our mini-spoon collection.” He catches sight of the box sitting on top of the stack next to the not-a-couch and grabs it, presenting it for Sam to see. “Not to mention our _‘vintage lace doily collection’_ ,” he adds, brows arching high as he meets his brother’s eyes, sarcasm so sharp it almost hurts.

Sam rolls his eyes, and whatever Sam was going to say in return gets interrupted by a voice ringing out from the open front door.

“Hi there.”

They both turn to look, and take in the sight of a woman in her twenties, blonde and gorgeous, dressed in jean shorts and a tank top, glass pan with cooked chicken held in oven-mitted hands in front of her. She’s all long, tanned thighs, stripe of her flat belly exposed between where the waist of her shorts rise and her t-shirt ends. Her hair is pulled back in a pony-tail, bangs held back with a red glitter butterfly barrette. 

“I’m Sunny,” she says, stepping through the doorway and lifting up the pan with a smile so bright and wide that Dean momentarily feels dazzled by it. “I live across the street. Brought you some baked chicken to say welcome to the neighborhood.”

For a second they both just stand there, mouths not quite hanging open.

She’s more Dean’s type than Sam’s, but it’s Sam who recovers first and steps forward, shooting Sunny one of his charming smiles, hands reaching out to take the glass pan. He stops, then grabs a piece of cloth from on top of a stack of boxes to cover his hands, and then takes the pan.

“Thanks, Sunny. That’s… really thoughtful.” He pauses awkwardly with pan balanced between his hands and then says, “I’m Sam. This is Dean.”

“Nice to meet you both,” she smiles, wiggling her fingers at Dean. “Thought maybe you all could use something for dinner, first day moving in and all.”

“Thanks,” Dean says, just for something to say. “We… we were gonna order pizza,” he adds after a moment.

“Bernie’s pizza ain’t bad, but it’s got nothing on a home cooked meal,” Sunny says with a wave of her hand, gold bracelets tinkling around her wrist. She stops then, looking at Sam. “You should keep that warm. You know where the oven is, right?”

Sam’s brows rise for a moment, and then he seems to catch on to what she’s saying, giving a belated chuckle. “Of course.” He turns, like he’s starting to head for the kitchen, and then hesitates, saying, “Come on in.”

Dean catches his eye across the top of Sunny’s pretty, petite, blonde head, and Sam tilts his head, brows rising a fraction as his shoulders lift.

So Sam’s gonna play this like it isn’t weird at all, some stranger walking into their house with a home-cooked meal. Dean doesn’t remember this happening when he moved into a new place with Lisa. Maybe it’s different in small towns? Maybe this is the kind of place where this… is actually normal?

No. There’s nothing normal about carrying baked chicken into a stranger’s brand new house. He’s pretty sure. He’s seen a lot of movies.

Sam’s putting the chicken into the oven, looking at Dean in a silent plea for help as Sunny begins to chat on about all sorts of things. Dean’s mouth pulls in a kind of pleased shrug before he turns away. Sam’s on his own with that shit. Thank fuck he stepped up first. 

Dean decides what he really needs after the day so far is a good stiff drink. He’s got whiskey in his bag, and well, he’d bet his ass they’ve got glasses here somewhere, too—probably antique ones with hand painted pink flowers and frosted unicorn jizz on them—but he doesn’t care enough to suffer through the horror. The bottle’ll do for a drink or two.

He’s just swallowed down the first pull, feeling it warm his belly, when another woman walks in. She’s decidedly older but slender as a reed and sharp as a knife, her white hair pulled back loosely in a clip, sun-browned, wizened features creasing into a smile as she sights him and holds up a round pan.

“I hope you boys like pie,” she says.

And okay, it’s weird, yeah, but it’s _pie_. 

Dean puts the cap back on the bottle and moves to help her. “Here, let me help you with that.”

“Such a gentleman.” She graciously lets him take the pie pan, trading it with nimble fingers for the bottle in his hand. She carries it to the kitchen alongside Dean, holding it up to look at it as Dean sets down the pan.

Dean’s mouth is watering with the scent of homemade apple pie when notices the old woman is eyeing his bottle with something more than curiosity. 

“Do you need a…” Dean motions toward the empty cabinets with stupid hands. 

While he’s in the middle of that thought, the woman opens it and takes a drink straight from the neck, rolling the liquid around on her tongue while she decides something, and then swallows, nodding.

“…glass,” he finishes, lamely. “Ma’am?”

“Oh, call me Esmerelda, honey,” she says, then, smiling as she pats his cheek with a bony hand. 

 

*

 

Esmerelda isn’t her real name, as it turns out—though she never does tell them what her real name is—it’s her screen name. She used to be a big B movie star back in the early days of horror movies. The Princess of Scream, she says with a wry smile. 

It’s then that Dean realizes he remembers her movies and decides he really needs to do something; take another drink, or have some pie; something that isn’t looking the old woman in the eyes.

“Oh, honey,” she says, smiling indulgently as she pats him on the back. “It’s okay. I was something back then, wasn’t I?”

Bob and Jeanette show up while Dean’s still recovering, nursing himself on a couple more drinks and a hearty helping of Sunny’s baked chicken. They turn out to be Sam and Dean’s next door neighbors—other next door neighbors, in addition to Esmerelda—and they show up with a twelve-pack of beer and a bag of tortilla chips and a glass pan with layers of dip, cheese and tomatoes sprinkled on top.

Dean has no idea why these people are just walking into this house full of shit that isn’t theirs with food and welcoming them to the neighborhood, but the more he drinks, the less weird it seems, so he decides to roll with that.

Bob, as it turns out, owns the local hardware store, and Jeanette’s a stay-at-home mom. Sunny’s a waitress at the Main Street Grill who’s taking acting and dancing classes and wants to move to New York. Amber and Chris show up a little later, and Dean never does catch what they do or where they live—for all he knows, they’re party crashers—but by then he’s had enough to drink that he doesn’t really care. He lives in a house with a mini-spoon collection. Enough said.

Their cover story is that they’re best friends who got tired of the nine-to-five city office life and moved out here—near Sam’s uncle--where it was quieter to get away from it all, to reassess their lives and careers. Which sounds ridiculous to Dean, but clearly he sells it like a champ, because they buy it, Sunny patting him on the shoulder and telling him how she understands. She sends a meaningful glance in Sam’s direction that Dean can’t quite figure out, but then she’s moving on with one of her brilliant smiles and Dean forgets all about it.

At some point later, on a cue Dean doesn’t really catch, everyone decides it’s time to take off, and they’re left saying goodbye, waving before they close the door.

“It’s only nine o’clock?” Dean asks, incredulous as he looks at his phone.

Sam, who’s had quite a bit to drink, himself, nods unevenly.

“Jesus Christ,” he sighs, falling down on the couch or whatever-the-fuck it’s called.

Sam falls in beside him, and Dean figures there’s probably beds waiting for them in their rooms, but there’s no way he feels like walking that far. Shit, for all he knows, they don’t even have sheets. But if they do, he’s sure they’re hand embroidered. Probably with singing birds and butterflies. And he is just in no way prepared to deal with that shit right now.

“Who the fuck were those people?” Dean asks.

“Our neighbors, I think.”

“Jesus,” Dean sighs, shaking his head, pressing his fingertips to his brow.

Sam pulls from the couch, weaving his way to his bag. When he falls back onto the couch, he’s got his laptop, settling it across his knees and opening it, and by the time he gets back, Dean’s mind is on an entirely different track.

“Hey Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Why’d you buy all this shit without telling me?”

There’s only the slightest hesitation. “Because I didn’t wanna furniture shop with you.”

“What?” Some part of Dean is still sober enough to be offended. “Why?”

“I didn’t wanna argue with you about how we don’t live in a seventies porno.”

Dean tilts his head from side to side and then nods drunkenly. That’s fair. But still. “Living in Grandma’s Antique-World Orgasm is better?”

Sam snorts and then laughs, reluctantly. “Yeah. Okay. Point taken.”

“What’re you doing, anyway?”

“Shopping,” is all Sam says.

Dean can see stuff like couches—real _actual_ couches, he thinks—and chairs on the monitor.

After that, Dean gets more and more bored, his head falling to one side, eyes fluttering closed.

He falls asleep on Sam’s shoulder, muscles of Sam’s shoulder flexing against his jaw as he types. 

Dean falls into the rhythm, lets it lead him down into sleep.

 

 

When he wakes, face-down against Sam’s stomach, it’s to the faint smell of something burning. His brother’s body is twisted awkwardly, feet still on the floor, upper body practically hanging off the arm of the couch-thing, head tipped backward into nothing, arms folded across his chest as he snores loud enough to wake the dead.

Dean shifts, not quite awake yet, trying to get more comfortable, sliding his legs across his brother’s, cheek nuzzling deeper into his brother’s belly. He’s halfway to sliding his arms around Sam’s waist and hugging him like a pillow when his brain finally catches on to what he’s doing.

He fell asleep on Sam? He pushes up and away quickly, Sam snorting and twitching once before settling back down, and runs his hands through his hair, trying to figure out where he is. The boxes around him take a few seconds to sink in, words like “dining room china” and “living room knickknacks” outside the reach of his understanding. His eyes focus on the neat writing on one particular box that reads “antique afternoon tea set”, and he decides he’s either in hell, or he’s dreaming. 

He’s almost decided he’s dreaming, letting the idea lull him back down, body falling back toward Sam’s before the smell of something burning registers again. It doesn’t smell like anything important, it’s not human flesh or bone, and it’s almost far enough away that he could ignore it—and then he sits bolt upright, realizing.

Sunny’s chicken. 

He’s on his feet before he realizes he isn’t quite sure who ‘Sunny’ is, or why she’d have brought chicken to…

He blinks, lashes fluttering. To their house.

They have a house. With a tea set.

Fuck.

He runs for the kitchen, grabbing the door on the oven and throwing it open. He can see the sorry, black husks of chicken shriveled on the pan, and looks around desperately for something to use as an oven mitt. He spots one lying in the corner of the kitchen and vaguely remembers Sunny wearing it when she brought the pan over in the first place. He grabs it, shoves it on and rescues the chicken, leaving it a smoking ruin on the stovetop.

In the distance, a bell rings out, and the sound reverberates through Dean, ringing to the bone.

 _That’s_ what woke him up. That’s the sound he heard before. But it’s not his alarm… it’s…

It’s the doorbell. They have a fucking _doorbell_.

In the living room, on the thing Dean refuses to call a settee, Sam snores away blissfully.

Asshole.

Dean runs his hands through his hair again and rubs at his eyes, already on his way to the front door. He takes a breath, tries to look like a normal neighbor as he opens the door to daylight. 

He only has a split second to see who’s on the other side, image still registering as the person shoves their way inside, arms clamping around Dean like iron bands.

“Dean!”

Dean coughs, trying to breathe, still trying to make sense of the whole thing.

“Cas?” He’s so grateful, so stupidly overwhelmed for a moment, after all this time searching for Castiel, that he brings his arms up, hugs Castiel back.

They’re hugging. Yeah. He’s got to be dreaming. He’d be sure he was dreaming, in fact, if he couldn’t still hear Sam snoring in the next room.

“You were hard to find,” Cas says, arms squeezing Dean more tightly. “God didn’t leave me with a map to your door.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Dean mutters, rolling his eyes. Not that they had a door before yesterday, but there were a few key places God could’ve sent Castiel that they’d have found him before now.

Dean pats Cas on the back a few times.

“Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?” Cas says, still holding him tight.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you, but this is getting weird.”

“Oh,” Cas says, drawing back. “Sorry.” His face twitches, like he’s trying to find the right expression, but all he can do is grin. “Angels… when we become human… your emotions, they’re overwhelming at first.”

Dean blinks at him a few times.

“How’d you find us?” Dean asks, still not sure if he’s dreaming.

“I had to walk all the way to Bobby’s,” Castiel explains. “It took weeks. Sometimes I rode in the cars of strangers. They smelled of smoke and candy canes. I didn’t like it.”

There are footsteps coming up behind Dean, slowing. Dean can almost imagine Sam’s expression.

“Sam!” Castiel runs to Sam, throwing his arms around Sam’s massive frame. Sam hugs him, perplexed, then pats Castiel on the back a few times with one arm, and then tries to let go. When Cas just holds on, Sam stares at Dean from across Castiel’s shoulder with wide, wondering eyes, and Dean lifts his shoulders.

“Human emotions are overwhelming,” Dean says, somberly, trying not to laugh.

Sam holds up his hands around Castiel, begging for an out, and Dean just shrugs. Cas is human and here, and Dean just had to stop their house from catching on fire from baked chicken brought over by their neighbor. It’s not like _anything_ makes sense. 

He might also still be a little bit drunk. Or if he’s not, maybe he needs to be.

Sam finally manages to disengage himself from Castiel’s suffocating embrace, confused as he tries to find words. “So you’re human?”

“Yes. I’m Castiel Novak,” Cas grins, digging into his pocket and pulling out a South Dakota driver’s license, holding it upside down for Sam’s inspection. “I’m… Jimmy Novak’s twin brother, according to…” he pauses, swaying a bit as he thinks, and then his face lights up with memory, “documentation and the family memories.”

“Jimmy’s twin brother?” Sam asks. 

“Yes. Because in God’s exact words…” Cas squints, like he’s trying to remember something particularly important, and then puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder, finishing with certainty. “He ‘didn’t know how else to explain that shit.’”

Sam squints back at Cas in disbelief. “And he gave you a _driver’s license_?”

“Like you’re surprised?” Dean asks.

Sam purses his lips, head tilting back and forth, and then he sighs, nodding. “Yeah, not really.”

“I’m starving,” Cas says, absently.

“We’ve got microwave popcorn,” Dean says, having no idea how his words are going to affect the future.

 

*

 

“This is… so good,” Castiel says, rapturous through a mouthful of popped kernels, knuckles shiny with butter as he shoves in another handful. “It’s like eating Heaven. With butter.”

Dean stares at him over a mug of steaming coffee, and thank fuck he’d had the foresight to buy grounds and a coffeemaker before they’d moved in, because he’s pretty sure he couldn’t watch this without it. Or watch Sam looking equally mesmerized by Castiel over his own mug of coffee, which reads “World’s Greatest Grandma” on the side.

Yeah, okay, the coffee still isn’t really helping with that last part, though the shot of whiskey he added to it is, a little bit. He’s still refusing to acknowledge the duck wearing a motherfucking bonnet _and_ an apron painted on the side of his own mug. As evil goes, it was the lesser of what they found in the box labeled “coffee mugs”. He needs his coffee, ducks be damned.

Castiel grabs the last remnants of popcorn from the ceramic bowl (which, of course, has pink rosebuds and blue ribbons painted around the rim), chewing the kernels and sucking on them like Dean’s heard monsters suck the marrow out of bone—possibly with even more relish.

“Is there more?” Castiel asks, eyes bright, almost feverish.

 

*

 

By the time Castiel polishes off his third bowl of popcorn, rubbing his belly and making expressions that make them both… uncomfortable, Sam’s shooting him accusatory looks, and Dean’s really ready to move on.

“What are we going to do today, Brain?” he asks Sam, just a little too pointedly.

Sam looks momentarily flustered, and then his brow settles, mouth firming as he looks around the room.

“We unpack.”

“The vintage lace doilies? The afternoon tea set?” Dean asks, deadpan. “Where should we start?”

“What are these things?” Castiel asks.

“Such a good question,” Dean says, narrowing his eyes on Sam and his ridiculous coffee mug.

 

*

 

Castiel is still dressed in the only clothes Dean has ever seen him wear, and they didn’t travel the road well. He looks disheveled and dirty and like he’s possibly been living in a cardboard box for the last month. Dean had never given it much thought before, but Castiel must have been used to repairing and cleaning his clothes with angel magic or something, before he became human. Dean sends him off to shower with some of Dean’s clothes that _might_ not be too huge on him.

Dean helps Sam hook up the television first, and connect the cable Sam’d scheduled to have hooked up the day before. The TV isn’t anything like an antique; it’s a huge flat screen that comes with its own wooden stand, and there’s even a stereo receiver and DVD player and a five speaker sound system. They also have an Xbox, which sparkles in a way that suggests it’s never been used once. Dean suspects Grandma had a grandson who was good with technology.

He and Sam manage to get it all together in pretty short order, though hanging the speakers will have to wait until they dig out the brackets from one of the endless boxes.

They decide to start unpacking in the kitchen, which turns out to be a huge mistake. But then, unpacking boxes anywhere in this house probably would be.

Sam and Dean both stare into the box labeled “kitchen utensils”, mystified. 

“Is that a…” Sam starts to ask.

“It looks like a really big spork. Made out of wood.”

“What’s it for?”

“We could probably kill a vampire with it.”

Sam’s silent for a long moment. “Maybe we should start with the bedroom boxes.”

 

 

The bedroom boxes turn out exactly like Dean expected. Clean white linens that smell faintly musty, folded corners topped with quilted comforters. There are roosters on his, trapped inside country style bordered squares, and it’s better than pink ribbons and ponies, but only just barely.

Sam’s comforter has an array of flowers in every shade of pink and purple printed across a white background, green leaves curling around them. 

“That’s… really pretty,” Dean snickers against the back of his hand, and yeah, maybe he’s got roosters, but that’s better than what Sam’s got.

“I hate you,” Sam breathes.

“Hey. _You_ bought this shit.”

Sam gives him a death glare, and Dean heads back to the room that’s supposed to be his, wanting to unpack the rest of his own horrific surprises alone.

The boxes contain mostly the kind of stuff he would have expected. Some weird, country style ceramic animals, some carnival glass bowls, a few hand knitted lace doilies aside and apart from the box downstairs, which he can only imagine, based on its sheer size, contains at least six-hundred of them.

He opens a box labeled “memoirs” with his pocket knife. Inside, he finds several ancient stock bonds for “Alexander Bell Telephone Company”. Some bank statements that look almost as ancient. And beneath the layer of documents as antique as everything in this house, he finds a photo album.

The cover is smooth, faded pink silk, fake purple and pink flowers flattened and smashed by time around its borders. There’s a picture in the center of an extremely elderly woman who’s dressed like it’s the 1980’s, edges peeling back, the words “A Tribute to Sally Mae Evans” written in cursive above it.

Curiosity—admittedly morbid curiosity—gets the better of him as he opens the album. 

The first page is a notice calling for all family, friends and acquaintances to submit articles for Sally Mae’s 80th birthday tribute. The next holds a yellowed article from the 20’s that announces her marriage to one John Michael Evans. After that follows a flow of articles and letters attesting to Sally Mae’s love for community and family—one particular letter written by someone who lives in the Cayman Islands, who knew her briefly years ago.

Pictures of children, grandchildren, even the first few great-grandchildren follow, each one with a caption beneath, written out on paper, explaining each encounter and event.

It goes on, and on, and ON, for every single page of the album, and Dean flips through to the end, which ends with pictures of Sally Mae’s 80th birthday party, her great grandchild in her arms, grandchildren and children all around her. She's dressed in blue silk, sitting in an armchair with her knees slightly parted so the dress drapes between. The baby is perched on one knee, staring at the camera, her hand on its belly. Sally Mae is smiling for the camera, white hair pulled into an elegant top knot, light shining on it. In her other hand she's holding a highball glass filled with amber liquid and a cigarette.

“Rock on, Sally Mae,” Dean murmurs with an approving nod. Saint or not, tribute or not, Dean can appreciate that.

Dean wonders when she died. Why this album is included in the boxes Sam bought. Maybe it passed into the hands of one of her daughters… that’s the only thing that makes sense, given the age of the pictures.

Dean shuts the album, and wonders why he’s wondering at all. This whole thing is _weird_. He wonders briefly if Sally Mae had been a witch. If she’d somehow enspelled all these people to think the sun actually shone out of her ass. Because seriously, who does shit like this?

He needs more coffee.

 

 

Dean goes downstairs and pours himself a second cup of coffee, with another shot of whiskey, and the world slides into a bit of a softer focus as he walks to the blinds covering the living room window. He pulls the knob, opening the wooden slats and squints against the bright light of day.

Castiel is on the couch, cleaned and dressed in Dean’s clothes, which, with the ends of the jeans rolled up, actually don’t fit him too badly. Cas has the TV tuned to a cooking channel, and Dean grits his teeth against the sound of some overly-chipper woman chopping _onions_ like it’s a revelation.

Outside, it’s Sunday, because Sam decided moving in on Saturday probably seemed more normal, and there are… people in their yards. Next door, Bob has a huge, soapy sponge in one hand as he moves it across the contours of his modest domestic car, length of hose clamped in one hand, tiny rainbows running through the fine mist that escapes. Bob’s watching Jeanette and their toddler son over one shoulder, tiny boy on wobbly legs running for the driveway, mother chasing after, infant held in one arm, pressed against her shoulder even as her other hand reaches to stop him. She catches him in time, and Bob goes on with washing his car.

Across the street, Sunny is on her knees, digging in the flowerbeds around the house, and she looks just as amazing from behind as she did from the front, shorts tugging up to reveal the barest curve of her ass. He turns his head as another motion catches his eye, Esmerelda walking down her driveway with a potted plant in one hand, cigarette held between her middle and third finger of the other, and beyond her, next door to Sunny, another couple (Chris and Amber, he thinks, vaguely remembering them), walk from their car to what Dean guesses is their house, grocery bags in their arms.

There are children playing on the lawns of other houses, parents watching on as flowers spring up at the outer edges of their yards. From up the street comes the sound of a lawnmower, only faintly heard through the glass.

These are their neighbors. Mowing their grass and washing their cars and planting flowers. Living their lives, doing all the things they think matter. Drinking their coffee out of mugs that say “World’s Greatest Mom or Dad” in all sincerity. It’s so normal that it’s absurd.

They have neighbors. They have a house. They have a former hunter’s house full of stuff that doesn’t belong to them and neighbors who have no idea who they really are.

Dean sighs, closing the blinds and taking another drink from his mug.

On the couch is Castiel, former angel, watching the Food Network. And in one of the bedrooms upstairs, is his brother, who used to be Lucifer’s vessel. They’d saved the world once. All three of them. They’d saved it for this. So people could do just this. Go on living their lives.

So _they_ could. 

But Dean wasn’t supposed to be part of it. Not him, or Sam or Castiel. They were supposed to keep hunting, Castiel was supposed to keep being an angel, and the rest of the world was supposed to keep turning around them, in some kind of normal state. Hell, about a year ago, they’d all been doing exactly that.

The doorbell rings and Dean winces. It’s still too fucking weird.

He turns and sees Castiel practically _bounding_ for the door wearing a bright, almost maniacal grin, and Dean manages to grab him by the arm, halting him.

“You should let me get that. Human emotions being overwhelming and all.”

“But I want to see who it is.”

“Fine,” Dean says, moving to answer the door. “But if you go hug-postal on a complete stranger, I’m cutting off your popcorn supply.”

Castiel’s expression drops, and when he looks properly chastened, Dean turns the knob. 

“Hi, Dean,” Sunny says, flashing him one of her dazzling smiles. Her blonde hair is braided back into pigtails tied off with tiny blue ribbon bows, and the butterfly barrette pinned into her hair today is also blue. She’s still wearing the tiny cut-off shorts, knees smeared with dirt, and even though she’s gorgeous and barely dressed, it’s her smile that really gets to him, the way her blue eyes light up, like she’s really happy to see him. 

“Oh, sorry I’m such a mess,” she says, motioning at the smears on her knees. “I was just doing some spring planting.” She flips a wrist backward in the direction of her house, the motion as cute and perky as the rest of her. 

“That time of year, you know,” she goes on, wiping the back of her hand across her brow. She’s practically glowing, and well… sunny. She’s completely adorable.

“Oh. That’s… great.”

There’s a long pause, and Dean feels like he’s supposed to say something else.

“What are you planting?” Dean asks, because he doesn’t know what the hell he’s supposed to say, and that’s better than, ‘what do you want?’ which is what he really wants to know, but he’s pretty sure that would be considered rude when you’re neighbors with someone.

“I’m planting Beebalm, pink ones. My mom, she had pasque flowers out there, but you know… she’s been gone a couple years, and I figure it’s time for a change. I just decided this morning. You guys inspired me with your story about moving out here to reassess your lives and all.” She flashes him a grin and she’s got a smudge of dirt on one cheek that only makes her even more adorable, and Dean kind of wants to hate her, except that she’s so genuine that he really can’t.

“Hi,” Castiel says from behind him, and Dean turns his head to see Cas with that huge, goofy grin on his face as he waves at her. “I’m Castiel.”

“Oh. Well hi there,” Sunny says, smiling back. “I’m Sunny. Do you… live here, too?”

Shit. Dean’s going to have to explain this, and fast, before Cas does it for him.

“He’s my… cousin,” Dean says, and then nods as the words register. Yeah, that’s good, go with that. “He’s going to be staying with us for a while.”

“Oh, well then, that’s great,” she nods. “Castiel, that’s an interesting name.”

“Yes,” Castiel says, enthusiastic. “It means ‘the angel of Thursday’. It’s actually--”

Dean cuts him a look across his shoulder, and Castiel’s enthusiasm dials back a notch.

“I’m not. An angel of Thursday, I mean,” he adds. “I was never a real angel, actually. Definitely not,” he finishes with another grin that’s completely unconvincing.

Sunny’s brows draw together in confusion.

“Just call him Cas,” Dean says and fakes a smile of his own that he knows is far more convincing. “That’s what we call him.”

“Alrighty then,” Sunny says, taking a breath as she recovers her smile. “Anyhow, I came to invite you and Sam to the barbecue I’m throwing tonight—everybody’s coming, so you guys have to. You guys _and_ Cas, I mean. He’s invited, too.”

Dean hesitates. “We… well, we have a lot of unpacking to do.”

“Oh, I can totally help with that,” Sunny says, lighting up. “I mean, tomorrow, I can help. I’d be happy to. Help you make up for the time you miss out by coming to the barbecue. I’m working dinner shift tomorrow, no classes, so I’ve got all day.”

When Dean hesitates again, Sunny does a little dance on the porch, hands clasped together against her chest. “Please?”

“We’d love to come,” Castiel exclaims, and Dean blinks, barely resisting the urge to cut Cas in half with a glare.

“Oh, good,” Sunny says, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, flashing them both a grateful smile. “Come on over around six, okay?” She touches Dean’s arm and then gives him a wink that has absolutely nothing to do with flirting… which sort of takes a few seconds for Dean to actually figure out. 

“See you all then.”

Dean watches her go down the steps and walk back across the street, still slightly dumbfounded.

“We’re going to a barbecue.” Castiel does a little dance that disturbingly resembles Sunny’s. 

“She wasn’t flirting with me,” Dean mutters, distracted as he shuts the door. “Why wasn’t she flirting with me? I’m good looking. I’m charming.”

“You’re very good looking,” Castiel nods in agreement.

Dean cuts his eyes at Cas, even more disturbed by his agreement.

“You’re not always charming, though. You can be very off-putting.”

“Only when I’m annoyed,” Dean says, bordering on seriously annoyed.

“Like now.” Castiel nods and gestures at Dean like Dean’s just proved his point and Castiel couldn’t be happier about it.

“Go watch the cooking channel,” Dean grates.

 

 

He and Sam do get around to some unpacking after that, and it all mostly turns out with them holding things in their hands with no idea what to do with them. 

“Maybe we should start piles,” Sam offers. 

“I’m only seeing one pile here.”

Castiel glances over, eyes lingering on a ceramic pig. “It’s… not so bad. If you took away the… dots… and the bow with the dots.”

“And set it _on fire_ ,” Dean adds, tone acidic.

Cas tilts his head to the side, still eyeing it, and then nods.

“Burn pile, that’s what I’m seeing,” Dean nods at Sam.

They spend twenty minutes in front of a piece of furniture that Sam insists is a china cabinet, Sam trying to figure out how to position the plates before Dean ditches out, joining Castiel on the couch that is definitely not a settee with his bottle of whiskey in hand. It’s past one, that’s late enough.

Castiel, who has figured out how to make his own microwave popcorn without burning it—now—shoves another fistful into his mouth as they watch someone preparing foie gras, whatever the fuck that is. 

Dean grabs a handful of popcorn and offers him the bottle wordlessly over a commercial break. Cas looks at it for a moment, and then takes it, sipping experimentally. 

By four o’clock, they’re both drunker than they should be, and Dean’s learned more about cooking than he’d ever cared to know. He also knows the thing they saw in the utensils box earlier is a salad fork, and he thinks if he sits here much longer, he might officially turn into a girl. Sam is lost somewhere in the house, presumably still trying to unpack boxes, and Dean distantly feels the press of guilt. He should probably go help, as ridiculous as it all is. He’s on the verge of getting up from the couch when the show cuts to commercial and Castiel finally says something.

“Are we supposed to bring something to this barbecue?” Castiel asks. “It seems to be customary, based on what we’ve been watching.”

Fuck if Dean knows. “Like what?”

Sam would know. Probably. Sam did spend three years at Stanford and apparently had friends. He probably did stuff like this. Dean never has, when he and Lisa were together they didn’t really even talk to their neighbors much.

Dean shuts the thought of Lisa and Ben out of his brain.

“Hey Sam?” Dean shouts in the general direction of the upstairs.

Sam’s footsteps creak slightly against the hard wood, his head peeking down between the upstairs railing about ten million miles from his feet. “What?”

“What the hell are we supposed to take to a barbecue?”

“What barbecue?” Sam asks, confused.

“Sunny invited us to hers. At seven. _Everyone_ is going to be there,” he adds, mimicking Sunny’s words, not quite able to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

Sam thinks for a moment, straightening and walking the rest of the way down the stairs. “What’s she cooking?”

Dean looks at Castiel and Castiel looks back with an expression that says he knows about as much as Dean does. Perfect.

“No idea,” Dean shrugs.

“Red meat or white,” Sam says after a few seconds. “One or the other. We can bring white and red wine.”

“Great,” Dean nods. “Any idea where we’re gonna get that on a Sunday in South Dakota?”

“It’s not a dry state, Dean. Bobby lives here.”

“Did you catch the part where I said on a Sunday?”

“Sioux Falls is a big city.”

All three of them pile into the Impala, Cas in the backseat, Sam driving, and Sam turns out to be right. Sioux Falls city does indeed sell liquor on Sundays. 

Dean buys a few bottles of whiskey and sets them into the shelves in the basement, between stacks of cans of beans and packaged things he thinks are military issue MRE’s that must be at least forty years old. Clearly, Dale was the kind of person that never threw anything away, and Dean wonders what else was here before Daisy and company cleared out the rest. He suspects Dale’s left-behind’s would be a lot more interesting than grandma’s antique collection.

He walks the breadth of the room, looking at everything. There are bins of rice and flour with lids on them, and they look fresh enough that he figures Dale must have been cycling through them and re-stocking. There’s what is quite possibly a metric ton of various dried meat, rows and rows of jars of pickled vegetables and jellies, cans and cans of food, boxes of bottled water, a microwave and an ancient freezer in the far corner filled with every kind of frozen food Dean could imagine and then some. Tons of TV dinners, French fries, cheese sticks, DiGiorno pizzas, a stack of steaks and a few London broils. 

There’s even an entire huge box of microwave popcorn stuffed behind the freezer, underneath a few cases of Sam Adams.

Dean really loves Dale a whole lot.

A water purifier, an electric generator, boxes of batteries and flashlights and glow sticks, lighters and matches, an old fashioned transistor radio, a CB, a police channel monitor. There’s a gas stove shoved into the corner next to the dryer, cabinets with pots and pans, bowls and plates stacked in the cabinet above. Silverware and cooking utensils in box in front of it, even some spices packed in along one side. On the other side of the room, there’s a pot bellied old fashioned stove with a huge bin of coal beside it, which would work for heat and even cooking when the gas service finally gave out.

The single bed is made up with bedclothes that could stand meeting a washing machine for the scent of _basement_ clinging to them. But the washer and dryer are down here, too, so Dean supposes he understands the neglect. Without much thought, he lifts the thin mattress, finding a bare set of coiled springs beneath. He can see a battered, brown box underneath that layer, crinkled and whitened at the edges of its wrinkles, closed lips tattered with age.

He lets the mattress fall and kneels down, reaching under and tugging the box free. It’s not labeled, but Dean can guess what’s in it. All the memories any hunter would want to keep close in the worst—maybe the end—of times.

He isn’t sure he really wants to know what they are, here in this room with a bed made up for a single person. He can guess well enough.

He can hear Sam and Castiel talking upstairs, the TV droning on about something that’s undoubtedly about cooking, and he should really be up there.

Yeah, he really should.

He pushes the box back underneath the bed and leaves it there, nearly empty bottle grabbed between his first and second fingers around the neck as he stands.

 

 

“What were you doing down there?” Sam asks, as Dean emerges from the basement.

“Just seeing what was there,” Dean shrugs. “By the way, if the apocalypse happens after all, we’ll be stocked up for a while.”

Sam nods and makes another note on a pad of paper in front of him.

“What are you doing in the kitchen?” Dean asks.

“Making a grocery list,” Sam says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “We need food, Dean,” Sam says off Dean’s look, without even looking up to see the expression on Dean’s face.

“You seem a little tense for someone planning a shopping spree,” Dean observes.

Sam takes a breath and then sets down the pen. “This thing tonight. We’re taking Castiel.”

“And?” Dean asks.

“He’s all hormones right now. Last night,” Sam glances around the kitchen and lowers his voice another notch, “after you fell asleep, he started sobbing—over a commercial.”

Dean takes a second to fully appreciate that.

“Wow, okay, yeah,” Dean nods and takes a quick drink from his bottle. “He’s worse than you.”

Sam just blinks at him once or twice and gives him that look that says Dean’s humor is completely and utterly wasted on him.

“So you’re not worried about taking him out in public?”

Dean considers it for a moment, and then realizes how absurd it is that he has to think about this at all. He lifts one shoulder. “Girls eat that ‘sensitive dude’ shit up. He’ll be fine.”

“Dean, we have to live here.”

Dean sighs, and then just lays it out for Sam, because really, there’s no other way. “Okay, fine. We what, leave him here? He cried over a fucking commercial, Sam. You wanna see a breakdown? Tell him he can't come.”

Sam shoves his hands in his pockets, thumbs fidgeting at the frayed edges as he shakes his head, eyes rolling up and off to one side. “Shit,” he sighs, closing his eyes and shaking his head once.

“Exactly,” Dean says, raising his bottle in a toast before he has another drink.

 

 

[](http://i777.photobucket.com/albums/yy60/nyxocity/BigBang2012/1314-Meadowlark-Rd-floor-plan1.jpg)[](http://i777.photobucket.com/albums/yy60/nyxocity/BigBang2012/1314-Meadowlark-Rd-upstairs1.jpg)

Floor plans by the_stowaway

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

  


They bring white and red wine, and both turn out to be good, because Sunny is cooking ribs and hamburgers, and someone else brought chicken. Everybody they’ve already met is here, plus some people Dean’s never seen before. Ed is the town sheriff, who lives just around the corner of the block, and Dean actually likes him a lot, the way he sits back in a lawn chair with a beer and explains how he’s off-duty when he’s off-duty. He tells Dean some stories about what passes for crime in the area, with a wry smile and something like an appreciation for how it’s so small town and not at all scary. He wanders off in search of another drink after a while.

Castiel turns out to be a hell of a lot more mellow when he’s been drinking, and even though he’s extremely enthusiastic about everything, people seem to be finding him charming and laughing rather than backing away slowly.

Dean spots Sunny talking to Sam, animated as she flips ribs on the grill, and Sam’s nodding along to whatever she’s talking about. And yeah, good luck with that, Sunny. The last time Sam was interested in a blonde, her name was Jess. Sam’s avoided blondes with a vengeance since then. Not that Dean can blame him.

He watches them for a bit, and decides Sunny’s not really flirting with Sam after all, which is just as—well, okay, _almost_ \--as weird as Sunny not flirting with Dean earlier. Sam might be his goofy little brother with the ridiculously long hair and let’s not even talk about the sideburns—but he’s a good looking guy. Tall, and built, with that emo thing going on that a lot of girls seem to like, even though he passes on most of them, even when their ‘like’ is obvious.

Sam might have given up on settling down years ago, he might have resigned himself to one night stands without even saying goodbye, but Dean knows him, knows that deep inside, Sam only ever gave it up because he knew it wasn’t possible to have anything more in the life they lived as hunters. Sam never stopped _wanting_ it. Sam just gave up, gave in.

Dean never had to make that choice. When he fell in love, it was completely accidental and unexpected, and he knew it was temporary, knew Cassie would see through him sooner or later. One way or another, he knew it wasn’t going to last, never had any illusions. But Sam… he was going to marry Jess. Jess went to her grave never knowing, but Dean does, thanks to Azazel.

Sometimes demons lie, but sometimes they tell the truth. Dean has never asked Sam, but he believes it. Sam was going to ask Jess to marry him. He’d been ready to settle down, to do exactly what they’re…. trying to do right now.

Imagining Sam with that diamond ring secreted away, probably in his pocket every day, dreams of a normal life just around the corner… up against this.

It’s grossly unfair. Life’s never been fair, to either one of them, but at least Dean never had any hope after the night their mom died.

Someone settles into the chair beside him, gnarled hand resting on his knee, cigarette held between the second and third fingers. 

“Penny for your thoughts,” Esmerelda says, and he can hear the smile in her voice.

Dean swivels his head to look at her and smiles back. 

“You look lovely, darlin’,” he tells her, and she does. She’s wearing a deep green sundress with dark pink flowers reaching up from the hem in abstract patterns. 

“Thank you, darlin’,” she says right back, nudging him with her shoulder and winking at him as she smiles.

He’s got a glass of whiskey in his hand—glass pulled by Sam from some of the boxes where there’s probably a whole collection of the perfect drinking glasses in order of size, and shoved into his hand, insistent that Dean _not_ drink directly from the bottle tonight.

He tips back the glass and drinks what’s left, setting it down on the concrete porch of Sunny’s house. He leans down, reaching for the bottle underneath his chair, and offers it to her.

“I’ve always thought pretense was boring,” Esmerelda agrees, taking the bottle and knocking back a drink.

 

*

 

He and Esmerelda have shared the bottle half a dozen times without talking, the old woman going through several cigarettes in the meantime, when Dean hears a car in the distance. It’s _loud_ , glass packs announcing it long before it pulls up into the driveway at almost deafening volume, lights on the front of Sunny’s house outlining the form of a bulky 1968 Mustang, body painted black, green flames dancing along the underside, up from the wheel wells, across the hood. The radio is blasting, bass thundering through the air, almost a match for the glass packs.

“I usually like this song,” he remarks to Esmerelda, and she laughs.

The engine cuts out to the silence of the entire group gathered on Sunny’s doorstep, and a guy emerges from the thrown open door, standing up straight in his jeans, leather jacket and boots, upper body heavily muscled in that way that means he spends a lot of time at the gym.

Dean leans forward in his seat, watching the way Sunny turns—and then she throws her arms around the guy, kissing him full on the mouth.

He lolls his head to the side, looking at Esmerelda, who just nods.

Sunny introduces him to Sam and Dean as “Johnny, my boyfriend,” and Dean isn’t surprised (because really, she hadn’t flirted with either of them, and Esmerelda just confirmed), but he’s disappointed. Because this guy is an asshole, with a swagger and glass packs to announce how much he’s making up for… whatever else he doesn’t have. 

And as he thinks it, Esmerelda pats his knee, says, “Penny for your thoughts.”

Dean nods and hands her the bottle.

 

*

 

Johnny introduces himself personally, asks about him and Sam being the ‘new neighbors’ in a tone of voice that leaves Dean not quite able to decide why it makes him want to hit the guy. Sunny intervenes before Dean can fully process it, and then he’s gone, Sunny pulling him off through the crowd.

“Don’t pay him any mind, doll,” Esmerelda says, giving Dean back the bottle. “He’s an asshat.”

She says it in such a normal, pleasant tone of voice, like she’s talking about the weather, and Dean has to laugh.

After a while, Esmerelda excuses herself to go mingle, and the guy who falls into the chair next to Dean next looks all of about eighteen with sticks for arms and legs. He’s wearing jeans about three sizes too big for him with so many rips in them that they look like they’re about to fall apart, cuffs scuffed and frayed, threads dangling so long they might trip him if his untied sneaker shoelaces don’t get him first. He’s wearing a faded, stained yellow t-shirt with a huge smiley face on it and about a thousand woven bracelets on both his forearms in every color of the rainbow. He’s also wearing a huge pair of black sunglasses, even though the sun’s been down for about an hour now. His hair is long, curly dirty blond and there’s scraggly stubble on his chin to match. He looks like he might have bathed sometime in the last month, maybe. He introduces himself as “Neal—call me Naf”.

“What’s Naf mean? Dean asks, letting go of the guy’s hand and fighting the urge to wipe his fingers on his jeans.

“It’s my initials. Sounds cool, right? _Young Naf_ ,” he says in a dramatic tone, arms making grand gestures in the air. “See?” he says, looking at Dean knowingly, nodding by jutting his chin forward and back.

“So you’re the new neighbors. Welcome to the neighborhood,” Naf grins. “You and the big guy, huh?”

Dean can’t figure out what it is about Naf’s tone that makes him hesitate—like the guy is saying something Dean’s not quite catching. “Sam. Yeah.”

“Cool, cool,” Naf does his weird chin-jut nod again. “What about the other guy?”

“Cas?”

Castiel appears in front of him as if summoned. “Yes, Dean?”

“So,” Naf says, settling his elbows on his knees as he leans forward, looking up at Castiel, “You’re staying with Dean and Sam?”

“Yes,” Castiel nods. “I live on their settee.”

Naf just stares at Castiel for a long moment (well, Dean assumes he’s staring from the way his face is still turned toward Castiel’s, though with the sunglasses it’s hard to tell), and Dean’s searching frantically for something to say when Naf busts out laughing.

“All right, man,” he says to Cas, still laughing, “You’re funny. You can stay.”

“Would I have to leave if I wasn’t funny?” Castiel asks, deadpan serious as he squints at Naf.

That just makes Naf laugh even harder. “Oh man,” he coughs, looking over at Dean. “This guy is good.”

Dean nods, forcing a smile. “It’s… why we keep him around.” God help him. No, not God, fuck God, he amends quickly.

Castiel looks at Dean, brows rising and pulling together in a sort of confused frown, and it’s clear he doesn’t understand why Naf is laughing. “Is this good? He’s laughing. I don’t have to leave, do I?”

“Is he always like this?” Naf asks, wheezing out the words.

“Full time.” Dean makes a mental note to get Cas drunk every time they leave the house. 

“Go have fun, Cas.” Dean waves a hand in the direction of the crowd, and Castiel gives him a grin before he bounces off.

“So the three of you, huh?” Naf asks.

“Yeah. Cas is my… cousin.”

“Uh huh,” Naf says like Dean’s full of shit, and Dean panics for a second before Naf does his weird nod thing and then claps Dean on the back so hard that Dean almost loses his grip on the bottle in his hand. 

Naf gives him a big thumbs up complete with a huge grin. “Way to go, man.”

Dean blinks at him, completely confused. “What?”

“Okay, okay, it’s cool, I get it. Between the two of us,” Naf leans in closer and Dean can smell patchouli on him, “they’re both _smokin’_.”

He smacks Dean on the shoulder again and then he’s up out of the chair and gone, leaving Dean wide-eyed.

Okay, yeah, he’s got no fucking clue what that was all about.

 

*

 

The rest of the night is pretty good; Dean’s got a belly full of ribs and whiskey, and he has a long conversation with Bob about the hardware store, and how home improvement is a far more difficult business than most people understand, which as a former construction worker, Dean actually feels he’s qualified to comment on.

Sam’s just as talkative with just as many people, and Dean can’t seem to help watching him. Sam’s not comfortable, exactly, but he’s doing fine.

It’s actually not so bad, almost fun, until someone decides Sunny should fire up her Xbox and they should all play Rock Band. Most of the neighbors seem excited by the idea of singing and playing faux guitar, and Dean exchanges a glance with Sam that says how very much both of them are staying right here by the grill.

“Whatever happened to ‘two-beers-and-I’m-singing-karaoke’ Sam?” Dean has to ask, smiling at the memory.

“I got older,” Sam shrugs, and Dean feels the words like a kick in the heart, Sam’s expression filled with the years between then and now. 

“And,” Sam adds, smiling just a little, “my tolerance got higher. I’m not _that_ drunk.”

Bob stays with them a while, drinking a beer and talking about how much he hates Rock Band before he goes inside to use the bathroom and never comes back.

“Rock Band victim,” Dean pronounces Bob as if he’s dead, after fifteen minutes.

“We should go before they try to make us sing, Dean.” Sam’s maybe as drunk as he is, and it’s kind of cute.

“You mean before you give in to your inner karaoke star?” Dean asks with a grin.

“I’m about one beer away,” Sam agrees with a smirk.

Dean can hear the thumping bass guitar and drumbeats outside the house.

“We have to go get Cas, first.” Dean considers the idea though the haze of his drunkenness.

 

*

 

When Dean walks into the house, he spots Castiel instantly, standing in front of the TV, microphone in his hand.

“Oh, God no,” Dean whispers. He recognizes the funky guitar chords coming out of the speakers.

Catsiel is swaying drunkenly—in terrible time, Dean notes—to the music, smiling as he begins to sing the opening words of the song—badly.

“A long, long, long, long time ago  
Before the wind, before the snow  
Lived a man, lived a man I know  
Lived a freak of nature named Sir Psycho”

His voice is flat, and terrible, but no one seems to care, because he’s singing with joyous enthusiasm at the top of his lungs. Behind him sits Esmerelda, shoulders straight, her posture composed, sticks in her hands as she taps the drums in perfect time, and of to either side, Bob and Sunny are playing guitar and bass.

Dean can’t be here, can’t hear this or see it. He turns, finds Sam standing in the doorway just behind him, his face slack with surprise as he takes in the scene. Which leaves Dean in the room long enough to hear Cas belt out—like his life depends on screeching the words at top volume—

“Deep inside the garden of Eden  
Standing there with my hard-on bleedin'  
There’s a devil in my dick and some demons in my semen  
Good God no that would be treason”

“We can leave without him,” Dean insists, and Sam nods in quick agreement.

They exit the house, Dean slamming the door behind them on the chorus.

 

*

 

When they get back to the house, Sam heads to the kitchen to get some water and Dean follows along behind him, digging around in pantry through the various dwindling bags of snacks they’d brought with them from the Impala.

When he turns around, mostly empty bag of pretzel wheels in one hand, Sam’s leaning back against the sink, watching him.

“What?” Dean asks.

Sam takes a long swallow from his glass and sets it on the counter, palms spreading out behind him on either side of the sink to hold his weight, and then he shrugs. “Just, you seemed like you were having fun tonight.”

Dean toasts Sam with his bottle. “With enough fuel, I can have fun anywhere.”

The look on Sam’s face falls, and Dean would swear he looks disappointed.

“It was all right,” he shrugs, and decides to move for the door at the exact same time Sam does, shoulders jostling against each other. Dean loses his balance, falls forward a little, and Sam’s hands are on him, pulling him back upright too hard, and both of them overbalance, hitting the kitchen floor side by side. Sam’s up first, rolling on his side to look at Dean, who’s just started to think the kitchen floor’s not so bad, it could be softer, but it feels pretty good, actually.

“You okay?” Sam asks, and he seems a little closer to Dean than is strictly necessary, but they’ve both had plenty to drink and Dean doesn’t really care a whole lot.

“Do you need help?” Sam asks, frowning at him.

Dean reaches up, putting the hand no longer holding a bag of pretzel wheels against his brother’s cheek. He starts to purse his lips, sees Sam’s eyes widen a little, feels him breathe out in surprise—and then blows a kiss at his brother, grinning. “My hero,” Dean chuckles, patting Sam hard on the cheek.

Sam yanks away from Dean like Dean had burned him, smacking Dean’s hand down. “Asshole,” he hisses.

It takes Sam a minute to get on his feet, and then he’s reaching down, tugging Dean up off the floor. Dean peels from the floor reluctantly, trying to catch his balance as he gets to his feet, overbalances and lands face first against Sam, nose smooshing against his brother’s mouth. Landing there turns out to be pretty comfortable, too, so he doesn’t bother moving, but he wishes Sam would relax a little more, his chest feels stiffer than the kitchen floor.

Sam pulls his head back gently, looking down at him, and Sam’s looking at him kinda weird, not saying anything. He leans a little closer to Dean, and Dean isn’t sure what his brother’s doing, but he’s really hungry and—

“Sam? What happened to the pretzel wheels?”

Sam goes still, and then he pulls back from Dean, rolling his eyes. “I’ll get them for you.”

Dean thinks Sam sounds way more pissed off about something like getting a bag of pretzels for him than Sam should, but well, sometimes that’s just Sam.

Dean feels a lot better after he eats the rest of the pretzel wheels, and a mini-bag of potato chips.

“Let’s watch Ringu,” Dean says falling onto the fucking _settee_ beside Sam.

Everything in Sam’s expression communicates very deeply how much he’s saying “fuck you” without saying a word.

“Come on,” Dean urges, nudging Sam’s shoulder as he grins. “It’ll be fun. Remember the first time we watched it and you couldn't sleep without the lights on for a week?”

“Not _fun_ , Dean,” Sam grates. “Not even a little bit.”

“You gotta admit,” Dean says, still grinning, “much stuff as you'd seen by then, and a _movie_ makes you sleep with the lights on? _That’s_ funny.”

“I was _fifteen_ ,” Sam says, teeth grinding together.

Dean knows he’s edging into ‘pissed off Sam category five’ territory here, and he doesn’t really get why. He doesn’t want to, either. He just wants to watch a movie with his brother.

“Fine,” Dean sighs. “You pick.”

They watch something on cable instead, a movie called “Insidious” which is kind of scary, right up until the point where the demon reveals itself, and from then on it’s kind of ridiculous, Sam and Dean both laughing over the way overdone scene where the demon is playing (what the ever loving fuck?) musical instruments in something that’s supposed to be like hell.

The ending’s not too bad, but it can’t overcome the last thirty minutes, and as the credits roll, Dean’s almost dozing off, head lolling against the back of the couch, mind drifting, catching against something that’s been bugging him all night.

“Hey, Sam,” he says drowsily. “Why would Naf give me the thumbs up on living with you and Cas? And then tell me you guys were hot?”

There’s a long pause before Sam replies. “I told him about our knitting circle.”

Dean doesn’t understand what that has to do with any of them being hot. “Wait,” Dean says, trying to rouse himself. "There's knitting? There better not be knitting, or--"

“Go to sleep, Dean.”

“Okay.”

He’s distantly aware of Castiel coming into the house, the smell of popcorn filling the house, weight of him sinking down between Dean and Sam. Dean should probably go to bed. The place with the crisp white bed sheets and the roosters squared comforter. But he feels okay right here. 

He hears the TV switch over to the Food Network, and then he falls asleep.

 

 

When he wakes in the morning, head springing up from the couch in confusion, he realizes he was sprawled across Castiel—who’s sitting upright, snoring against the back of the couch. There’s fake popcorn butter clinging to Dean’s cheek, and a few kernels too, judging by the feel. He brushes at his face, peeling them away, and then sits up, taking stock of Sam crashed out on the other side of Castiel. He doesn’t look much different than yesterday, upper body hanging sideways off the edge of the arm of the couch, arms folded across his chest, snoring so loud that Dean isn’t sure how he slept through it. He’s used to Sam snoring, but Jesus fucking Christ, Sam deserves _awards_ for the magnitude of this snoring.

The doorbell sings chimes through the house again, and Dean shoves from the couch, hands scrabbling at his face. 

Doorbell. Right. _That’s_ what woke him up. Blearily, he blinks at the clock on the cable box, not quite able to register the numbers 8:30 for a few moments.

The doorbell rings again, and he pushes up from the couch, leaving Castiel and Sam on their own, hurrying to the front door.

“Hi Dean,” Sunny grins. Her blonde hair is pulled back in farm girl pigtails, hands tucked into the front of her cut-off jean shorts. “Here to help you guys unpack.” She stops then, looking at him, frowning lightly. “Did I wake you up?”

Dean looks in the direction of the volume of snoring coming from the living room. He wants to tell her to go away, let them live in peace, but she’s their neighbor, and she’s really cute and ready to be helpful, standing on their porch. And fuck it, why not?

“No, it’s fine, come on in.”

 

*

 

Sam and Cas nurse coffee from their “World’s Greatest Grandma” and “I Heart North Carolina” mugs, both of them perched on the edge of the fucking _settee_ like a pair of birds while they watch Sunny begin to unpack their boxes.

 

*

 

“Oh my God,” Sunny gasps, holding up the twenty-third doily from the box. “It’s so beautiful.”

“You can have all the doilies,” Dean tells her in all sincerity. “We don’t have room for them.”

“But they’re so gorgeous. Just look.”

Dean blinks at the pattern, and then nods, taking another sip from his whiskey-laced coffee. 

“You should have them,” he says, firmly.

 

*

Sunny insists that they keep _some_ of the doilies, placing them on various flat, furniture surfaces around the room, and Dean can only watch. When Sam gives him a helpless look, he doesn’t even look back, shaking his head.

“No. You don’t get to complain. This is all your fault.”

Sam cuts him a sideways look that says Dean was the one who agreed with Sunny on this deal. And Dean still doesn’t look at him, taking another drink from his mug of spiked coffee. “You bought it.”

Sam sighs, and then lifts his hands and makes a motion that clearly says, ‘okay, whatever, how do we _stop_ her?’

“All you,” Dean says, done with it.

“Dean,” Sam grunts under his breath, finally resorting to speaking. “If we let her do this, we’re never going to be able to take it down. We’ll have to let it stay so we don’t offend her.”

“Yep,” Dean nods, and takes another sip of his coffee.

 

*

 

“Oh my God! Oh my _God_ ,” Sunny exclaims, and Dean wonders if she’s found a box full of gold pieces, or maybe the mother lode of gold laced doilies, she’s so excited.

“Look!” She holds up a tiny statuette. It’s a boy, Dean thinks, made of porcelain, pale skin and big eyes like empty black, glass buttons. He’s got wings, and a golden halo lying against his wispy brown hair. He stares up at Dean piously, like he might be about to cry or try to eat Dean’s face while he sleeps, head in the form of a misshapen potato.

“The whole box is full of them,” Sunny goes on, pulling out one after another and setting them on the coffee table in a succession of true horror. 

“Oh, look at _that_ ,” Dean says, dripping sarcasm as he turns, looking at Sam. He mouths, “what the ever loving fuck?” at Sam, and Sam lifts his shoulders, completely bewildered.

“I have no fucking idea,” Sam mouths back.

“Those are… disturbing,” Castiel remarks, squinting as he leans in slightly toward the box, like he’s worried it might attack him.

Sunny, meanwhile, is over the moon. 

“Precious Moments figurines! My mother loved these. She used to have them all over the house.” Sunny stops then, looking at the boxes beneath this one, and then turns back to Sam and Dean. “And there are boxes and boxes of them! This could be the _entire collection_. Do you guys really have the entire collection?”

“Well,” Dean says with a quick shrug, ready to be rid of responsibility for this. “They’re Sam’s thing. You know, he just… _loves_ those Precious Moments.” Dean throws in a quick laugh and pats Sam on the back as he looks at Sam for an answer to Sunny’s question. 

Sam grimaces and rolls his eyes at Dean, and then tries to make a polite face as he looks at Sunny, mouth opening, closing, opening and closing, and Dean’s almost sure Sam’s going to bail before he finally finds a tight smile and nods. “Pretty near a full collection, yeah.”

“They’re _adorable_ ,” Sunny gushes, and Dean thinks she might explode with glee as she lifts out the tiny statues one by one. She sits six of them on the table, and tilts her head to look at them, clapping her hands together before craning her neck to shoot Sam and Dean a brilliant smile. “We have to put them _everywhere_!”

Sam’s looking at Dean helplessly, and Dean just shrugs.

“No… Sunny,” Sam says, stepping forward finally, holding up a hand. “I’ve been trying to…” Sam searches for words, looking disgruntled and annoyed as he swallows a few of them. “Cut back on my habit. It’s a money thing, and if we put them everywhere...”

Sunny’s about three planets away from hearing Sam as she flits around the living room, finding the perfect place for each figurine.

“…then I’ll never be able to quit,” Sam mutters, looking at the floor disconsolately.

“Dean,” Castiel sounds serious as he leans in, like he used to, before human emotions became overwhelming. He watches Sunny with something like fear in his eyes. “I don’t like this plan.”

Dean snorts and shakes his head resolutely. “Nobody likes this plan except for Sunny.”

“You should stop her,” Castiel says, intently.

“How?”

Castiel seems just as befuddled by the question as Sam was. Which is pretty much what Dean figured.

And that’s how their house ends up covered in lace doilies and Precious Moments figurines. 

Dean can always move into the basement.

 

 

That’s the first night Dean decides to sleep in his room. It’s weird, not listening to Sam breathe nearby, not having to worry about anything coming to attack them. He tosses and turns for a while, staring at the clock, wonders how Sam’s doing in his own bed.

Sam’s probably fine. Sam lived this way for years—well, at least for a while before he had a body beside him. It’s probably not weird at all for Sam, the closed doors between them, each of them in their own rooms.

Dean sighs and pushes his face into his pillow.

Eventually, he falls asleep.

 

*

 

He dreams of hunting, of Dale’s ghost walking the halls of the house. His face is wrinkled with time beyond human years, pale, with a paler beard and hair, steaks of black still remaining. He stands beside Dean’s bed, staring out toward the window facing the backyard. 

“I killed so many of them. Never made a difference,” he says, shaking his head. “None of it ever made a damned bit of difference.”

Downstairs, Sam kneels on the hard wood floor with a dozen figurines in his hands, their porcelain smooth faces expressionless. “This is our army now.”

Sam turns his head to look at Dean, his eyes glossy black, painted and empty.

Dean wakes to the sound of shattering.

He’s on his feet in an instant, gun pulled from its place in the antique wooden nightstand and tucked in at the base of his spine, shotgun grabbed in his hands, buckshot laced with salt, because you never know when God’s going to decide to fuck with you.

He creeps down the stairs, leaning at the edges of them, where they don’t creak, bending down, head pushed out far beyond his feet as he tries to see what’s happening.

Dawn is just beginning to creep in through the windows, strange gray light filling the living room. Castiel stands in the middle of it, chest heaving, with a… really long, metal spoon clutched between his hands.

All across the hard wood, there are shattered pieces of things that only register as white fragments as Dean runs the rest of the way down the stairs.

“What happened? he demands. Dean looks around, looks down, and realizes the fragments are pieces of shattered Precious Moments statues.

“I could feel their tiny eyes burning into me, Dean.”

Dean lets the shotgun fall and tries not to laugh, dream still so fresh that he manages. 

“So many of them,” Castiel says, and shudders, eyes haunted, face still twitching.

Dean has a tough time repressing his smile this time. “Yeah… I get it, Cas. Just put down the spoon, okay?

“You can… have it,” Castiel says, hesitant, handing the spoon to Dean a bit uncertainly.

Dean tests the weight of it and decides it’s made of iron. “Where did you get this?

“Out of the box that says ‘canning’.”

Behind him, he can hear Sam coming down the stairs, pausing before he asks, “We have a canning box?”

Dean looks at the spoon in his hand, frowning. “What’s canning?”

 

*

 

At final count, they lose two ceramic lamps, a few doilies, a vase, and just about every single Precious Moments statue Sunny set up in the living room. In Dean’s opinion, it’s not nearly enough damage.

“What? You couldn’t go all out and kill the garden paintings, too?” Dean asks in all seriousness.

Cas blinks at him and then looks at one of said paintings—a sun dappled path winding through a forest, multi-colored blotches of flowers blooming along the sides. 

“Why would you want me to kill the paintings?” Castiel is mystified, like he can’t imagine why Dean would want him to destroy something so beautiful.

Dean nods his head slowly, somehow not surprised at all, and walks to the kitchen to make coffee.

 

*

 

They’ve just managed to sweep up the not-nearly-enough damage when the doorbell rings. Sam answers it, and of course it’s Sunny.

“Arriving for unpacking duty,” she says, giving Sam a tiny salute before walking inside.

This can’t possibly go well.

“What… happened?” she asks, eyes flitting across the living room. “The statues…”

Yeah, Dean’s got no ready answer for that, and Sam doesn’t either, if his expression is anything to go by.

Which leaves Castiel.

“I didn’t mean to,” Castiel says, earnest. And then he lowers his voice, like he’s confiding a great secret. “But they were _watching me_.” He gives the room a nervous, paranoid glance, like ‘they’ might still be listening.

Sunny joins Sam and Dean in staring at him, speechless. Maybe Dean can sell her on a story about his crazy cousin Cas, who suffers from acute PTSD and just got out of the mental hospital. Maybe Cas was in Iraq or something. He’ll make it up as he goes along.

Sam beats him to the punch. “We, ah…”

Dean waits out the long, awkward seconds it takes for Sam to string together another sentence, mind already gearing up to go with whatever Sam comes up with. Hell, they did this for years on cases; they can do it here, too.

“…didn’t know he had a…” Sam falters.

“Doll phobia,” Dean says, grave as he takes a step forward. He puts his hands in his pockets and nods somberly. “Very sad.”

It takes a few seconds for the words to sink in for Sunny, but when they do, her expression changes completely, and she walks up to Castiel.

“Oh, sweetie,” Sunny sighs, and then pats Castiel’s shoulder, brows drawing together in sympathy. “I’m so sorry. If I’d had any idea… You should have said something.”

“I…” Castiel squirms a little bit, and Dean braces himself for whatever’s coming out next, wondering why Cas can’t be his ‘mute cousin Castiel’. “I’m sorry that I--”

“Had to get rid of them,” Dean jumps in helpfully. The last thing they need is for Sunny to know Castiel went Chuck Norris on them with a canning spoon. Whatever that is.

“Yes,” Castiel agrees, still focused Sunny. “I hope I… haven’t hurt your feelings,” he adds, reaching up to take Sunny’s hand. “I know your mother loved them. And you went through all the trouble to set them up so carefully.”

Castiel’s completely serious, not an ounce of falseness in him, and it’s… either the perfect thing to say, or really creepy, Dean can’t decide. Maybe both. 

Judging by the way Sunny just smiles at him—and Dean could swear she tears up a little—then squeezes Castiel’s hand, it’s probably perfect. 

“Thinking of me,” she says, shaking her head, low pigtails bobbing back and forth, “when I’m the one who scared you half to death… that could never hurt my feelings.” 

Dean clears his throat. “Well, that’s… good, then.”

Sunny turns toward him, letting go of Castiel and running her hand along the length of one pigtail. “So everything else is okay?”

“The doilies were a loss,” Sam says, and Dean has to turn away to mask his smirk at Sam’s dry sarcasm.

Sunny, who obviously doesn’t get Sam’s sarcasm, brightens visibly, grinning at Sam. “That’s okay. I’ll just bring you back some of the box you gave me. Good as new, no harm done.”

“Nice job,” Dean mutters, barely able to keep from laughing at the expression on Sam’s face.

 

*

 

Dean doesn’t remember talking to Sunny about her coming over and helping them unpack bright and early in the morning, but he figures he must’ve invited her. Until he finds out that it was actually Sam that talked to her about it, and then he looks at Sam almost sideways.

From Sam’s shrug and stricken expression, Dean can only assume that she’d offered and Sam couldn’t possibly say no. Not like Dean’s been able to tell Sunny ‘no’ about anything yet, either, but that in no way means he’s going to let Sam get off so easy.

Sunny helps them unpack the kitchen, and there are endless glasses and bowls and cups and plates and silverware that Dean recognizes as real silver instantly. She helps them find places for all the things in the box marked “Kitchen Utensils”, even though Dean doesn’t know what most of them are.

Slowly but surely, the boxes melt away. The ‘antique afternoon tea set’ survives, placed inside one of the kitchen cabinets, and Sam and Sunny spend an hour putting the china into the cabinet in the dining room, and Dean doesn’t understand how this is his life.

He spends most of the next hour in the basement, leaning up against the wiry box spring and mattress, drinking out of his bottle and looking at the box Dale left behind. Flaps pulled back, and there are letters in there, something leather-bound that looks like a journal. A lock of shiny golden-brown hair wrapped in a tiny blue bow of a ribbon.

Son? Daughter? Lover? Dean wonders, thumb stroking the edge of the open lid. Doesn’t matter much which one it was, he thinks, taking another drink. The story ends the same. Ends right here, in this room with its single bed, in this house owned by a single man who’d died of old age. It’s nothing like Sally Mae’s tribute. No one had left behind a tribute to Dale. All he’d kept in here had been his alone.

Dean knows what it says about him that these are the kinds of keepsakes he truly understands. The kind he’d never expected to have the chance to leave behind for someone else to mourn.

The box he’ll leave behind, if he leaves one at all, will be almost empty, filled with memories of Sam, what few pictures he has still tucked into the trunk of the Impala. An army man figure, some mix tapes. Sam’s report cards, Sam’s acceptance letter to Stanford, their father’s journal. Maybe Dean’s leather jacket. Hell, it won’t even have the one thing Sam ever gave him.

He’d thrown that away.

But Sam hadn’t. He thinks about Sam pulling the amulet from the trash, keeping it stashed in bags—the bags that Dean hadn’t been able to bring himself to go through, that sat in the trunk of the Impala for that year he’d lived with Lisa—keeping it close, keeping it with them all that time.

He doesn’t want to think about that. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. It’s gone, given away to God and more lost than if it had stayed in that motel trash can.

Dean shuts the box carefully and slides it back underneath the bed, footsteps heavy as he makes his way upstairs, shutting out every single thought one at a time until all he can see is Sam on the other side of the doorway, head tilting as he sights Dean.

Dean smiles, as easily as if the last hour hadn’t happened. 

 

*

 

Sam insists they have to go to the grocery store, list in hand, and Dean doesn’t _really_ want to go, but he kind of has to, just to watch this happen.

Castiel and Sunny decide to come along too, and that’s just…

Yeah, he can’t miss out on this.

 

*

 

Castiel wants to buy _everything_ , like a three-year old set loose in a candy store who has to put his hands on every single thing just to make sure it’s real. Dean can practically see hearts in Cas’ eyes while he looks at a container of strawberries.

“Heaven smelled like this,” Cas says, inhaling deeply.

Sam takes the container from his hand and throws it into the cart wordlessly, and Castiel shoots him the look of a wounded little kid before he’s off again, fondling the grapefruits in a way that makes Dean have to grab them away and shake his head at Cas.

“Keep it up and there’s no popcorn on this grocery list.”

Castiel frowns, shoulders slumping as sets the grapefruit down with a longing look. Luckily, Sunny’s distracted with Sam, talking to him about the quality of the bean sprouts, and Dean’s so about to disintegrate that conversation.

He manages to talk them out of the bean sprouts, but not much else. He’s used to grocery stores. Used to the shape of deep red apples and the bright skin of oranges, the icy green of grapes. He’s just not used to actually _buying_ them. He knows where the sugary cereals live, where the frozen pizzas and potato skins and TV dinners are. 

“Is this part of your plan to starve us to death?” Dean asks, pulling up a cucumber by the very end from the cart.

“Just put it back,” Sam sighs. “It won’t kill you.”

Dean holds it at arm’s length like it might bite him. “You sure?”

“We’ll buy pizzas, promise,” Sam says with a look that lets Dean knows he means it. 

“And potato skins,” Dean adds, dropping the cucumber and wiping his hand on his jeans.

“And bacon, and TV dinners, and frozen pie,” Sam nods, and for a second, Dean’s stupidly gratified.

“It’s like you know me,” Dean grins.

Sunny gives him a smile he doesn’t really understand, but Dean’s in a grocery store, Sam’s actually buying things from the fruits and vegetable aisles, and it’s not like any of this ever made sense in the first place, so whatever.

 

*

Keeping Castiel out of the dried goods bins proves difficult, and by the time they get to the aisle with candy, Dean’s ready to slap him in handcuffs. 

“But Dean… licorice,” Castiel pleads, desperate. “I remember the taste. I _need_ it.”

“Fine,” Dean sighs, throwing the bag of Twizzlers into the cart. He’s not going to argue on anything other than principle because yeah, Twizzlers.

 

*

Castiel nearly has a meltdown in the cereal aisle. “The colors, Dean! And the pictures! So many flavors!” Thankfully Sam and Sunny had glided right by them and Dean’s left alone in the aisle to babysit. Castiel looks like he’s about to cry with sheer joy, and Dean finally grabs boxes of Fruit Loops and Fruity Pebbles and starts dragging Cas from the aisle. Castiel lunges like a madman, shirt stretching between his arm and Dean’s grip, snatching a box of Trix from the shelves before Dean yanks him away.

*

Dean’s almost ready to knock Castiel out by the time they’re at the checkout and Castiel starts eyeing the candy bars like he’s going to have another breakdown. Dean tells Sam they’ll wait in the car and takes Cas outside.

 

*

Sunny heads off for school when they get back to the house, and it takes Sam some time to unpack everything and figure out where it all should go. Sam’s almost finished, and Dean’s popping open a beer while Sam arranges some things in the pantry cupboard when something in the room beeps.

“What the hell was that?” Sam asks, squinting as he tilts his head in the direction it came from. 

Dean knows what it is. Remembers the first time he ever heard the noise, in the only place he’d ever lived that was home. He remembers it going off, too, the way it had screeched, shrill high-pitched on the night that home had burned to the ground. It’s a sound he never wants to hear again. 

“It’s a low battery on the fire alarm,” he says, rubbing a hand against the side of his face as he moves to shut it off. He’s already spotted it, clinging to the ceiling of the kitchen on the far side, between the back door and where the doorway opens to the dining room. Stupid place for an alarm, in the room that he’s sure will be “The place they’re going to burn so much shit”. Welcome to Burn Central. 

Yeah, he needs to change that battery—or at least take it out—for now.

Who the fuck even uses nine-volt batteries for anything anymore? Weren't they like, a seventies thing?

He manages to find a small box of nine-volt batteries in the basement and replaces it, just in time for Sam to—predictably—burn the chicken and set it off. Dean takes it apart again while Sam opens the window and fans the smoke with an oven mitt with tiny rosebuds printed all over it.

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask Sam what they’re doing here, _why_ they’re here. But he knows why. It’s because they don’t have anywhere else to go. They don’t have anything else to do. 

Dean shakes his head, teeth sinking into his lower lip for an instant before he turns, assessing the situation. They’re both looking at the chicken to see if it can be salvaged when Castiel comes into the kitchen. Sam left the gas burner on in his hurry to get the window open, and Castiel takes one look at the dial and tells them that they had it turned up way too high. Sam mockingly asks Cas if he’d like to do it for him, and Castiel gives him a look like Sam just told him it’s Christmas morning.

Dean puts a hand to his forehead and closes his eyes.

 

*

 

Cas manages to not set the kitchen on fire, although when he’s done, there’s flour _everywhere_ , ghosting all the counters and the floor, and there’s a drawer full of cooking utensils pulled out in the middle of the floor, spoons and forks and tongs and ladles scattered all over the tiles. It looks like he pulled _everything_ out of the cabinets, and there’s grease smears across several cabinets, and most amazingly, Dean thinks, a spatter of brown grease that spans most of the kitchen ceiling. Castiel himself is grinning maniacally, smudged white almost everywhere except his eyes, which are wide and blue and so excited they’re almost scary. His hair is white with flour and it’s sticking up every which way in wild spikes, and he looks like a goddamned mad scientist, holding out a pan of breaded chicken like he’s just cured cancer.

The meal, surprisingly, doesn’t turn out to be _too_ bad. The breaded chicken is a little overdone, the mashed potatoes are runny, the vegetables are soggy, but it all tastes pretty good, and Dean guesses Cas must have picked up something about spices from the cooking channel he watches constantly. 

The food goes down even better with more alcohol.

It takes them hours to clean the kitchen, and in the end, they decide the trade off isn’t worth it.

 

 

A couple of days pass, and Sam continues to try cooking, burning things until Dean starts telling him how to cook, which just ends with Sam slamming down the pan and storming off in a huff from the kitchen, and leaves Dean standing over the food. For a couple more days they eat frozen food for dinner and have cereal in the mornings. Castiel stays on their fucking settee, flipping back and forth between the cooking channel and daytime talk shows while Sam and Dean look at job openings, trying to decide what they want to do. Castiel constantly tries to convince Dean to watch the cooking channel with him, and one day, in a fit of drunken masochism, Dean finally agrees. He doesn’t learn much about cooking, but he does discover he has a crush on Giada DiLaurentis and falls in instant love with the food Pioneer Woman makes. 

Sunny comes by again one day in between all that to help with unpacking, and they discover a nasty surprise in one of the boxes; all the instruments to play Rock Band, still in the original packaging. 

“What the fuck is it with this game?” Dean mutters. “It’s like a _sickness_.”

Castiel and Sunny, of course, are thrilled. Fortunately, they haven’t found the game yet, which means Dean still has time to burn the instruments before they do.

“Found it,” Sunny exclaims, popping up out of a box with an Xbox game in her hand.

Sam trades a glance with Dean that clearly says one of them should step in, and Dean sighs.

“It’s okay. I have more alcohol.”

 

*

 

The first time Dean remembers to check the mail he’s on his way back from helping Esmerelda fix a problem with her pipes. He’s still sweaty and grimy from squirming around under the kitchen sink as he opens the mailbox. 

There are no bills, because Sam’s already taken care of all their accounts online, but there are plenty of things for the former owner of the house, a few bank statements, a few junk mail solicitations, a National Geographic. He shuffles to the bottom of the stack, and there, underneath all the stuff meant for Dale, is a postcard. The sand on the beach is almost white it’s so pure, water crystalline blue in the distance. He holds the rest of the mail in one arm as he turns it over. The postmark clearly marks its origin as being from Rio, the words on the back written in a firm, concise hand. 

_Having a blast! Hope you're having fun with that last request! Kisses, god_

Smartass motherfucker.

“Fuck you,” Dean mutters, eyes rolling up at the sky.

Dean doesn’t even want to think about this morning, which had been spent taking Castiel shopping for clothes. Cas hadn’t had an eye for much of anything that wasn’t brightly colored or patterned, and Dean had finally had to put his foot down and tell Castiel there’s no way in hell he’s staying with them if he’s going to dress like a retiree golfer. Or a rent boy, Dean had to add half an hour later.

They’d finally had to give in and let him get the pastel polo shirts he refused to release even when Dean tried to take them from him, holding on to them in a death grip. Sam had said it was probably better than getting into a wrestling match with Cas in the store, and Dean had finally had to agree, physically wincing when Cas had proclaimed several brightly colored and wildly patterned cardigans were also non-negotiable. But Dean had refused to let him buy anything except jeans—and _no_ , not the skinny jeans kind—and a pair of khaki’s.

And that’s been Dean’s day: buying clothes for a hormonal former-angel who stays with them in a house that they bought full of grandma antiques, working on his neighbor’s pipes, and getting postcards from God. All in a day’s work for the average, normal person. 

Yeah. This is normal.

It’s late, and it’s been a long day and all he wants is to—

He stops dead as he opens the door, noting there have been some… changes since he left this afternoon.

Sam and Castiel are in the living room and Dean stares at his brother in disbelief.

“Sam. You bought _curtains_? For the _windows_?

“Yeah,” Sam says after a moment. “What else would I buy curtains for?”

“I don’t even know who you are,” Dean proclaims, holding up a hand, turning his face away. Jesus. They’re a cream color that perfectly matches the room, even Dean can see that, and it’s wrong on so many levels.

“What the hell else was I supposed to--”

“We have _blinds_.”

Castiel, resident derelict of the fucking _settee_ , turns his head, looking at the curtains as he shovels in another handful of popcorn. “I like them. They’re linear.”

“Right. I’m going to bed,” Dean sighs, running a hand through his hair. Christ, how is this his life? Maybe if they—no, he’s not even going to go down that road.

“God sent us a postcard, by the way,” Dean adds.

They both shift, turning to look at him. 

“What’d it say?” Sam asks.

“That he’s still an asshole,” Dean replies, taking the mail with him up the stairs.

 

*

 

He isn’t sure exactly what it is that bothers him about the curtains, but it keeps bugging him all the way up the stairs. And really, that’s just it—he’s not sure about anything anymore.

He’s got a brother suffering from a sick nesting instinct, a former angel with a popcorn fetish living on his fucking _settee_ , their hot neighbor still hasn’t flirted with him once, and God is still an asshole.

He really doesn’t understand what they’re doing here. Why he’s fixing Esmerelda’s pipes and actively having to discourage Castiel from figuring out how to assemble and set up the Rock Band instruments. Why Sam’s doing things like buying curtains and looking at college courses. He doesn’t even really understand what Sam’s doing here at all. Hell, why does Sam even need him anymore? Sam could go anywhere, do anything. He doesn’t need Dean dragging him down. And Castiel… it probably would have been kinder to leave him dead.

This whole thing is insane. Two retired hunters and their pet angel living together—and Castiel _is_ living here, Dean may as well accept that—what kind of future can they have?

It’s like some kind of cosmic joke.

Dean swears he can hear God laughing as he crawls into bed and pulls a pillow over his head.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

  


On the night Castiel finally figures out how to make Rock Band work, Sam looks at Dean and starts to throw rock, paper, scissors, but Dean knows a sucker bet when he sees one, and there isn’t enough alcohol in the world to deal with this. Dean suddenly remembers something very important he has to do in the basement and leaves Sam to fend for himself.

The iron plating dulls the noise to nearly nothing, but Dean didn’t shut the door all the way, so he can still sort of hear what’s going on up there. He figures he’d better keep an ear out, just in case Sam goes homicidal.

It goes on for a while, and Dean doesn’t hear Sam saying anything, which means either Sam went upstairs, or…

Or he couldn’t take it anymore and he’s in the process of getting drunk and gearing up to sing _with_ Castiel.

The thought is almost enough to make Dean go upstairs and check. Almost.

The yellowed letters in Dale’s box are curled against the right hand side, just next to the lock of hair lying on the leather cover of what’s probably a journal. Dean’s closer than he wants to be to reaching inside and unrolling them when Castiel hits a particularly high, screeching note.

He puts the box back and is on his way upstairs to make Castiel stop. He’s halfway there when the music abruptly cuts off, leaving Castiel’s voice singing all alone for a few more words. Dean hurries up the last few stairs, turning the corner of the doorway into the living room, ready to hold Sam back.

“But Sam, I was just about to break my high score,” Castiel is pleading, staring at the cord Sam’s yanked out of the wall like a child who’s been told he can’t have anymore candy.

Sam’s pissed, but he drops the cord, and the situation doesn’t look like it’s going to come to blows, which means Sam can handle it on his own.

“Bummer,” Dean says, looking at Cas. He keeps walking though the room, patting Sam on the shoulder once as he heads up to bed.

“I’ve got an idea,” Sam is saying as Dean rounds the corner at the top of the stairs. “Let’s watch a movie.”

“Oh, what movie?” Castiel asks, sounding excited, Rock Band forgotten completely.

Dean briefly considers going back downstairs since there’s movie-watching happening, but he’s had enough to drink that even the bed with its roosters looks appealing.

He closes the door before he hears Sam’s answer.

 

 

In the morning, he comes downstairs to find every light in the house turned on, Castiel curled into a tight ball in one corner of the couch. He’s got a blanket wrapped around him like a shroud, face just peeking out through an opening.

“Cas?” he asks.

Castiel jumps about a mile off the couch at the sound of Dean’s voice, and at the other end, Sam sits up, startled awake.

“What happened?” Dean frowns, walking closer.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Castiel says. He looks a lot like he did the morning with the dolls, eyes darting around, breathing heavily, like he’s expecting something to attack him at any moment.

“Sam…” Dean begins, looking over at his brother. “What movie did you guys watch?”

“Ringu,” Sam answers, stretching and looking satisfied.

Dean just shakes his head and heads for the kitchen.

Sam follows after a few minutes, walking into the kitchen and yawning.

“Dude. I can’t believe you did that,” Dean’s still shaking his head as he puts on a pot of coffee.

“What? You let _me_ watch it.”

“Yeah,” Dean nods, watching the coffee beginning to drip. “But he’s not even mentally fifteen.”

Sam stops and looks at him, bewildered and a little guilty.

“Inspired vengeance,” Dean nods, impressed. “How long you figure we’ll be living in lights-on-all-the-time-freaked-out-Castiel-land?”

The magnitude of it seems to hit Sam then, his whole face slumping in realization.

It goes on all day, Castiel curled on the corner of the couch like a spring about to uncoil, freaking out every time something makes a loud noise, and finally, Dean takes pity on him.

“Cas. It’s okay. You didn’t watch the video tape. Nothing’s coming after you, because you didn’t watch the video.”

Sam blinks, looking at Dean oddly for a second, and then he swallows, nodding.

Castiel looks at Dean like he’s hopeful but isn’t quite sure if Dean’s telling the truth.

“We don’t even _own_ a VCR,” Sam adds hurriedly, and Dean lets that slide, decides he’ll pack away Dale’s VCR downstairs the next chance he gets.

“Ohhhh,” Castiel says, as it finally seems to sink in. 

That seems to cure him, and he hurries off to the kitchen, most likely, Dean thinks, to make popcorn since he hasn’t eaten all day.

Sam’s shifting his jaw and he’s giving Dean an annoyed look that makes absolutely no sense to Dean.

“What? I fixed him! You should be _thanking_ me.”

“Why didn’t you tell _me_ that when I was fifteen?” Sam demands, petulant.

“I didn’t feel like dealing with terrified Cas on our couch for a week.”

Sam’s jaw muscles flex in a quick knot, his eyes narrowing a fraction, and Dean relents.

“Come on, Sammy. I didn’t think of it until a few minutes ago. Besides, this is all your fault for showing it to him.”

Sam nods thoughtfully. “So what you’re saying is, you should have known better than to show it to me?”

What the fucking fuck is going on here? “I didn’t know it would scare you. You knew it would scare him. You did it on purpose, Sam.”

“You saying you didn’t do it to me on purpose?”

“Of course not. Is that… you thought I did it on purpose all this time?”

“You thought it was awfully funny.”

“I’m your big brother. I’m _supposed_ to think it’s funny when you get scared by stuff that can’t actually hurt you. It’s in the contract.”

Sam nods, shortest layers of the hair around his face falling forward, brushing against his cheekbones. He gives Dean a look that’s caught somewhere between puppy dog eyes and angry three-year-old. “And how was I supposed to know it wasn’t gonna hurt me, Dean?”

Dean chews at his lip for a second and then rolls out a hopeful shrug and a smirk. “Because I thought it was funny?”

Sam’s jaw shifts to one side, and Dean recognizes the wounded, stubborn expression Sam patented when he wasn’t much older than three. Dean rolls his eyes, lets his head fall back against the fucking _settee_ and heaves out a long breath.

“Jesus Christ, Sam. Are we really gonna fight about something that happened fifteen years ago?”

If the expression on Sam’s face before he gets up and walks away is anything to go by, they definitely are.

 

*

 

Dean spends most of the rest of the evening on the couch next to a fully recovered Castiel until he can’t stand watching documentaries and talk shows anymore and heads out to the front porch.

It’s cool outside, almost cold, winter making one last grab at the heels of spring. He sets the bottle down on the wooden railing of the porch, resting it against the support of the tall beam that opens to the front door.

The front door of their house.

He wonders if it was hard for mom to settle down and raise a family, knowing the things she knew. Knowing all the monsters were still out there. It never seemed like it was hard for her, she’d always had a way about her, a natural, down to earth grace. She’d seen their dad die, made a deal with Azazel in her own dead father’s body to bring John back, sealed with a kiss. And yet Dean had never seen a trace of a hunter in the woman who had cut the crusts off his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, kissed his forehead and tucked him into bed every night. She’d been strong, so strong, but he never would have guessed what she’d been through. She’d seemed… normal.

Then again, he’d only known her for the first five years of his life.

He looks along the silent street of the neighborhood, at the family cars parked in their driveways, TV lights flickering through some of the windows, most of them dark, everyone tucked into bed. It seems early to him. Is it a weeknight? Hell, he doesn’t even know what day it is anymore.

“How’d you do it, mom?” he whispers, fingers closing around the wooden railing as he leans forward, head dipping forward.

A gentle night breeze is all that answers, chill of it running across his skin, goose bumps rippling on the surface, wind chimes clanging softly, deep, quiet ring that sounds like music. He lifts his head and breathes out slow. He should eat something, probably get some sleep if the neighborhood is any indication.

Across the street, Sunny’s boyfriend’s car is parked in the driveway, and everyone seems quietly tucked away inside their houses. He isn’t sure what makes him pause.

And then he is. The houses here are old, sturdy. If he’d been inside, like everyone else, he wouldn’t be able to hear it but…

There’s a very loud, very angry male voice yelling from inside Sunny’s house. He listens for a few a seconds, hearing the fury build in words he can’t quite make out, and he’s already halfway across the street when he hears something break inside the house, hears a female voice crying out.

He’s across the lawn in seconds. He throws back the screen door, kicks the wooden door open with one booted foot, sees Johnny towering over a cowering Sunny, his thick fingers wrapped around her forearm with bruising force, and is grabbing Johnny by his shirt, flinging him away from Sunny without anything like thought. He slams Johnny up against the far wall, fingers curling into the material of the guy’s t-shirt, fury running cold in his veins.

“What the fuck, man?” Johnny demands, expression caught somewhere between confused, fearful and indignant. “We were--”

Dean smacks the heel of his palm against the man’s throat and Johnny shuts up, voice breaking off into a panicked, choking cough.

“Sunny?” Dean asks, glancing over his shoulder. “You okay? Did he hurt you?”

“No. No, I’m okay. Just…” She looks okay from what he can see, just really fucking scared. 

“Did he hit you?”

“No. He just… scared me.”

She looks lost for a moment, small and frail, tears trailing down her cheeks in black streaks.

“I’m okay,” she finishes in a tiny, almost little girl voice. Sunny breaks down in sobs, then, and Dean turns his full attention on Johnny, yanking and slamming him violently against the wall again. He leans in, nearly vibrating with the need to hurt this guy, rage barely contained in his guttural, shaking voice as he stares Johnny right in the eye.

“You get in your fucking car, and you drive away from here, and you never, _ever_ come back. You come back here again, you ever so much as lay _eyes_ on Sunny again, and I will make you regret it for the rest of your life,” Dean tells him in all seriousness. “You understand me?”

Johnny apparently understands exactly how serious Dean is, because he nods frantically, still coughing.

“You’re goddamned lucky you didn’t hit her, or you wouldn’t be walking out of here,” Dean adds with a last, menacing glare, and then yanks Johnny away from the wall, spinning the man around and shoving him in the direction of the door.

Dean’s prepared for some kind of show of bravado, some stupid testosterone-filled attempt on Johnny’s part to reassert his manhood, but apparently he really did get how much Dean wasn’t kidding, because he stumbles out through the door, one hand on his throat, still coughing, and then practically runs to his car.

Johnny’s car roars to life, and Dean turns, taking in the sight of the shattered vodka bottle on the kitchen floor, Sunny standing too near the sharp edges of glass, sobbing into her hands, and walks to her, putting an arm around her and leading her gently onto the carpet of the living room floor. She turns then, throwing her arms around him, crying into his shoulder like she’s never going to stop. Dean holds her for a long few minutes, one hand pressed against the back of her head until she finally gets it all out and slows, sniffling.

He’s done this a hundred times on a hundred hunts. He’s just never had to do it for anyone he actually knows. Or over a completely human encounter.

“You okay?” he finally asks.

She nods, sniffling as she pulls back from him. “Yeah,” she nods, wiping at her face. “God, I’m sorry, Dean. I…” She looks like she’s about to break down again and Dean reaches out, settles a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault.” 

They clean up the glass together, and it’s weird, but Dean feels like it’s something he needs to do. Finally, they end up on the front porch, and Dean eyes the busted doorframe, telling Sunny he’ll help her fix it tomorrow.

Sunny sniffles and wipes at her eyes. “You’re such a good guy, Dean. If you and Sam weren’t…”she waves her hands in the air, like fluttering birds. “Sorry. I’ve got no business saying things like that. That’s the alcohol. It’s just, I wish I could find someone more like you guys.”

Dean’s staring at her, still stuck on the first part of what she said. “If me and Sam weren’t… what?”

“Oh, sweetie.” Sunny gives him a look of grave understanding that only the truly wasted can achieve. She puts her hand on his shoulder as she sniffles again. “It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend with us. Sure, some of the people in this town are small minded, but not here. You got one of the good neighborhoods.” 

“You… think… me and Sam…” Dean’s starting to put the pieces together, and he doesn’t like the picture he’s getting at all.

“No sense trying to hide it. All anyone has to do is look at you two and it’s so obvious how much you love each other.”

“Yes. Like friends.” Dean almost stumbles over the words, he’s in such a hurry to get them out. “ _Best_ friends. Like _brothers_ ,” he says, emphatic.

“Aw, sweetie. I know you two are having trouble. We all know that’s why you moved out here. But you two are meant for each other. We’re all pulling for you two to work it out.”

“’All’?” Dean echoes, the true horror of the situation dawning on him. 

“We all see it,” Sunny smiles, touching his cheek. “One look at you two... and well, it’s written all over your faces. Especially the way Sam looks at you.” 

It’s not like this is the first time people have thought him and Sam were a gay couple. They’ve been mistaken for one on more occasions than Dean likes to think about. It had been funny at first, almost cute to play it up a little bit, just to watch Sam scowl and squirm. It got a lot less funny the more it happened, the more the guys at the motel counter asked if they wanted a king. So this is nowhere near the first time it’s happened. And still, and yet, this _is_ the first time their _whole fucking neighborhood_ has mistaken them for a gay couple.

“No no no,” Dean says, uncomfortable laugh like a cough leaving his throat as he rushes to explain.

“You can’t fight fate, Dean,” Sunny cuts him off, smiling even wider. She leans in, and he can smell her, shampoo and cooking grease, scent of alcohol beneath, and she presses her lips against the corner of his mouth in a sweet, gentle kiss.

“Thanks for helping me,” she whispers with a last, sincere smile, and then she turns and slips in through the open door, closing it behind her.

Dean’s still standing there, one hand raised, finger sticking up like the point he was about to make before she planted one on him. Planted him with a friendly, grateful kiss that had nothing to do with wanting to _really_ kiss him, and hell, why not? She thinks he’s gay, and in love with Sam, and that makes it completely safe for her to just…

Jesus. He needs another drink.

 

*

 

When he gets back to the house, he finds Castiel sitting on the couch where Dean had left him. He goes to the kitchen, still freaked out as he puts a pot of water on the stove to boil. He takes another sip from the bottle in his hand, and then goes to the pantry to get a box of macaroni and cheese. 

Someone has added the word “popcorn” to the white board grocery list.

Castiel’s handwriting is perfect, rounded and excessively cheerful. Dean doesn’t know why that pisses him off, but it does. He’s just glad “popcorn” doesn’t have an “i” in it, because if Dean had to see little hearts dotting them on the white board for the next week he might really have to kill Cas. The smiley faces inside the o’s are bad enough.

Unfortunately, the thought only distracts him for a few seconds before his brain comes right back around.

Him and Sam? How could anyone think…

The thought is interrupted by Sam, himself, as he comes into the kitchen to get something—and stops dead at the look on Dean’s face.

“What happened?” he asks instantly concerned.

Dean explains about Johnny while he watches the water in the pot, not quite able to look Sam in the eye.

Sam’s quiet for a moment after Dean finishes talking, so then Dean does look up and over at his brother.

“Goddammit, Dean,” Sam explodes. “You’re lucky she didn’t call the _cops_. You broke into her house and assaulted her _boyfriend_. You can’t just do shit like that in the real world.”

Dean is completely taken aback for a couple of seconds before he gets angry, too. “She was in trouble.”

“People get in trouble all the time in the real world, Dean. It’s not our job to save them from that kind of trouble. Even if the girl might be really grateful.”

“You--” and Dean just can’t. He really fucking can’t. Okay, yes he can. “You think I did it to _get laid_?” he demands, incredulous.

“White knight sailing in to rescue her,” Sam shrugs, stiffly. “She’s exactly your type.”

“I didn’t do it to get laid,” Dean snaps. “Jesus Christ. I didn’t even think about it, Sam. When someone screams, I rescue them. It’s what I fucking _do_. You’d have done the same damned thing.”

Sam just looks at him for a second, and then he looks down at the floor like he knows Dean’s right and he doesn’t know what to say, and that’s okay, because Dean’s angry and just getting started and he knows _exactly_ what the fuck he wants to say.

“And oh, by the _way_ , even if I was doing it to get laid, no need to worry,” Dean says, sarcasm dripping from the words. “She’s convinced that me and you, we’re like, Romeo and Juliet and shit. In fact, the whole fucking _neighborhood_ is hoping we two crazy kids work this thing out.”

Sam’s face works through a series of expressions that would make Dean laugh under other circumstances. “What?”

“Oh yeah,” Dean says, waving an arm through the air, and he isn’t just _being_ sarcastic now, he _is_ sarcasm. “Sunny said we’re meant for each other, how the whole _neighborhood_ could all just _look_ at us and just _see_ how in love we are. They think we’re fucking _soulmates_.”

From the couch come the words, “You _are_ soulmates. You shared heaven.”

“Not talking to you,” Dean growls. And he’s really _not_ going to think about that, mostly because it’s true and he really can’t deal with it right now. 

“Yeah, not talking seems like a good plan,” Sam says, turning away from Dean.

Wait. What? _Sam_ is walking away from this conversation? Sam, who lives in the world of flogging the stain of something that might have been a horse, maybe, once upon a time? Dean’s not even close to finished.

“Hey,” Dean goes on, following after his brother. “ _You’re_ not the one who had to stand there and listen to her go on and on about the way we _look_ at each other-- _especially_ the way you look at me.”

Sam hesitates in mid-step, shoulder flinching like something struck him. He doesn’t turn around as he asks, “What about the way I look at you?”

“Who knows?” Dean throws a hand through the air. “She probably caught you giving me your puppy dog eyes or something. Like you don’t look at _everybody_ like that.”

Sam starts moving again, heading for the stairs, and Dean throws both his hands in the air. “Sure. Okay. I’m the one who had to suffer through our really hot neighbor supporting my relationship with my _brother_ , but you’re the one who should be upset.”

Sam keeps going up the stairs without slowing, and Dean gives up, goes back to the kitchen. He waits for the water to boil, trying to figure out what Sam’s problem is. Probably pissed Sunny thinks he’s even more gay than she thinks Dean is—and really, it’s no wonder, with his stupid puppy dog eyes and long floppy hair.

Or maybe Sam’s still mad about the original argument?

By the time the water boils, Dean’s decided he isn’t hungry anymore.

 

 

Sam doesn’t attempt to cook them anything in the morning, which either means Sam’s taking a break, or in a bad mood. Dean doesn’t pay enough attention to figure out which one it is.

They take their bowls of cereal to the dining room and gather around the glossy antique table and its high-backed chairs with white pillow seats.

Castiel and Sam eat in silence while Dean fumes over his bowl of cereal that’s quickly going soggy, gears turning.

“Why do all our neighbors think we’re gay?” Dean asks, mystified.

Sam doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes as he shrugs moodily.

“You are two grown men who live together,” Castiel points out cheerfully.

“In a _two bedroom_ house,” Dean feels the need to point out.

Castiel chews, swallowing, brows knotting together as he thinks about that. “Perhaps it’s the way you inhabit each other’s personal space constantly. You mimic each other’s movements all the time. You look at each other like you’re having conversations. I was watching a show about the psychology of love--”

“Just stop,” Dean says, pressing his fingers against the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes.

Castiel’s silent for a moment, and then he goes on. “You also have a settee.”

“ _Sam_ bought the goddamned settee,” Dean snaps, eyes flying open.

“I didn’t know it was a settee when I bought it,” Sam snaps back.

“Really? Is that why you haven’t bought us a _real_ couch yet?”

“You’re just as capable as I am, Dean. Go buy a couch if you care so goddamned much.”

“Or maybe it’s that you fight like you’re married,” Castiel says, wryness creeping into his amused tone.

“Shut.” Dean says.

“Up,” Sam finishes before Dean can.

Sam and Dean glance at each other in surprise.

“Finishing each other’s sentences is another indication of--”

“Why do you even know what a settee _is_?” Dean demands, looking at Sam as he cuts off Castiel.

Sam pushes up from the table, abandoning his bowl of cereal as he stalks from the dining room. Dean and Cas watch him go, and then Cas is looking at Dean in that intent way that means he’s about to offer his opinion again, and Dean just really _can’t_. 

“You sang ‘Sir Psycho Sexy’. That’s for life,” Dean tells him in all seriousness. “You can’t expect me to take anything you say seriously.”

Castiel’s expression is guilty, earnest, like he’s about to confess all his deepest, darkest sins, and that’s Dean’s cue to get out of here now.

 

 

It’s mid-afternoon and he’s lying down, laptop mostly across his thighs as he sprawls out on the fucking settee, half-watching a marathon re-run of Three’s Company and distantly thinking about how if he was Jack Tripper he’d totally be banging his roommates Chrissy and Janet, and their neighbors could just fuck off. He’s looking between the laptop screen and the TV when Jack’s neighbor from upstairs, Larry, gives Jack a double thumbs up with a meaningful look at both of Jack’s roommates.

“Completely platonic,” Larry drawls and winks, grinning at Jack.

Dean sits bolt upright, laptop falling to the floor as he grabs the back of the settee and one of its arms in a death grip.

Oh, God. Oh, _God_.

 _That’s_ what Naf was talking about. Jesus fucking Christ. He thinks Dean… he thinks Dean and Sam _and_ Cas are…

Oh, _God_.

He didn’t think it could be worse than the whole neighborhood thinking him and Sam were fucking, but holy shit, wow. Here’s a whole new level of fucked up he’d never considered.

Yeah, their _knitting circle_. Fuck you, Sam.

Wait. Sam knew about this?

Castiel cocks his head at Dean from one of the side chairs.

“This show is strange,” Castiel frowns. “No one ever tells the truth until the end. All of their confusion could have been avoided if they’d just talked to each other.”

Dean snorts humorlessly. “Welcome to the human race.”

 

 

Dean wants to confront Sam about the whole threesome thing, but he doesn’t, mostly because by the time Sam shows up, he’s on the other side of the fucking _settee_ , Castiel munching on popcorn between them, and he really doesn’t want to have this conversation with Castiel sitting right between them. Plus, Sam’s acting like everything’s okay again, and Dean isn’t sure he wants to risk damaging the balance between them.

Dean squints at the TV, trying to follow the movie, but it’s pretty much hopeless, because they’re watching something on the Syfy channel, and none of the movies on this channel ever make sense. Which is part of the reason he loves them.

Castiel falls asleep with his hand in the popcorn bowl, his head tilting, sliding slowly against Dean’s shoulder.

“Go to bed,” Dean growls, nudging him away.

“This _is_ my bed,” Castiel answers, head sliding back to rest against Dean’s shoulder.

“Then go sleep in my bed.”

Castiel sits up, groggy and swaying, and then does exactly that, climbing the stairs to the hallway and walking to the end.

Dean thinks about broaching the subject of _something_ with Sam, but he isn’t sure what.

“Nothing about this movie makes sense,” Sam says, settling back into the couch and leaning closer to Dean, and it almost feels _okay_ , like everything’s all right between them.

“All I know is there’s a fire worm,” Dean agrees, angle of his body filling the space between them, shoulder brushing against Sam’s.

“That opens wormholes,” Sam laughs, and Dean’s clearly had too much to drink, or is too tired or too something, because he leans into the sound, cheek resting against Sam’s shoulder, and shit, he really should have let Castiel stay, should have gone to bed, but he feels more comfortable right here. And Sam’s not complaining, yet.

“You okay?” Sam asks after a second.

“Fine,” Dean grunts, eyes blinking slowly against the TV screen. “I’m sorry about the movie.”

“It’s your fault we’re watching a wormhole-creating fire worm?”

“No. Well, yeah,” he admits. “But I meant Ringu. I didn’t know it would scare you. I shouldn’t have made fun of you because it did.”

Sam’s silent for a long time. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah?” Dean asks, fighting to keep his eyes open.

“Yeah.”

He falls asleep after that, head tilted against Sam’s shoulder, dreams of Sam’s fingers stroking through his hair, tips tracing the curve of his skull. It’s a little weird, but it feels too good for Dean not to go with it. He’s dreaming anyway, and it doesn’t cost him anything, so why not?

He falls deeper into sleep, empty black arms claiming him with the feel of his brother’s hand on his head.

He sleeps without dreaming, more peaceful than he has in weeks.

 

*

 

He wakes in the morning with his head in Sam’s lap, curled on his side, his brother’s fingers resting along the curve of Dean’s neck. Sam’s snoring softly, sitting straight up on the couch, head tilted against the back, his other arm on the armrest.

The momentary confusion of waking passes and then he realizes—he spent the night sleeping with his head in his brother’s lap. Dean pushes up and away from Sam, hand grabbing the arm on the other end of the settee to balance himself. Sam snorts and his eyes flutter open, head turning to look at Dean.

“Something wrong?”

No. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all. Dean just spent the night sleeping like a baby with his head in his brother’s lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. There’s nothing weird or possibly gay about that.

“Great. Everything’s great,” Dean affirms with a nod and overly bright smile. 

Sam squints at him with one eye, mouth opening like he’s going to say something else, and Dean jumps up from the couch.

“I’m gonna make coffee,” he announces, hesitating just long enough between saying the words and actually moving to make them come true that Sam tilts his head at Dean and narrows both eyes on him.

“Now,” Dean adds, and makes haste for the kitchen.

He watches the coffee drip, thinking how sleeping in Sam’s lap wasn’t the worst part, and how it really should be.

No. The worst part is how for the first minute or so until he’d realized what was happening, he’d felt perfectly content and happy to be there. More happy and content than he’s been in longer than he can remember.

Dean pulls a mug from the cabinet and pours it nearly full of coffee, adding a shot of whiskey after. He lifts the mug to his lips and takes a deep drink. The taste hits his tongue like relief, alcohol warming his belly as he banishes the thought.

 

*

 

He’s okay by the time they’re all gathered at the dining room table over their bowls of cereal, hanging on and doing just fine until Sam starts talking about planting a fucking _garden_.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dean asks, his cereal spoon frozen halfway to his mouth.

“Why not? It’ll save us money on shopping. It’s environmentally conscious. And it’s a pretty normal thing to do.” Sam shrugs, looking like he’s pleased with himself.

Dean can tell by Sam’s expression that Sam is definitely not kidding. He thinks it’s a great idea for them to grow some of their own vegetables, and Dean can’t even find the words to argue with him about it for a long few seconds.

“Sure, why not?” Dean says, dropping his spoon in his cereal bowl. It hits with a thunk, sending up spatters of milk. “No reason we shouldn’t grow tomatoes and cucumbers or whatever the fuck else people grow in backyard gardens. We should probably plant some flowers, too, while we’re at it. How about some roses to match the rest of our decorations to really gay it up?”

“I’ll put it on the list,” Sam replies, all the emotion gone from his voice.

“Great,” Dean agrees, voice just as flat.

They finish breakfast in stony silence, Castiel glancing back and forth between them. Sam finishes first, rising from the table and stalking to the kitchen. Dean can hear the water running, Sam rinsing out his bowl before he puts it in the dishwasher.

It’s then that Castiel looks at him, all guileless curiosity.

“Why does gardening make you angry, Dean?” 

After he gets over the urge to hit Castiel right between his un-ironic brows, Dean wishes he had a good answer.

 

*

 

They spend the next couple of hours not talking to each other, and Dean’s as angry at Sam as he is at himself.

Shit. They’d just made up, tension between them finally relenting a little, and then… gardening.

Why does gardening make Dean angry? He’s got plenty of answers, after the fact. Because it makes them seem even _more_ like a gay couple tops the list. Just behind that is because it feels final, like… putting down roots in the truest sense of the words.

 _Why does putting down roots bother you, Dean?_ the Castiel inside his head asks, intense and serious, and Dean mentally punches him in the face.

Fuck Castiel, and fuck Sam, too. 

 

*

 

That attitude lasts a little while, until Dean finally gives up and gives in and steps out onto the back porch.

He knows what he’s going to see—or thought he did, anyway—but the reality of it hits him in a way that he can’t really process. Sam is bent working near the back fence, Castiel standing off to one side, watching. Sam’s serious about what he’s doing, bent over something that looks like a pitchfork stuck in the ground, ass sticking out as he pushes it downward—and yeah, okay, Dean’s interpretation of this image is definitely being influenced by his neighbors’ viewpoint, because he’s entirely too conscious of the way Sam’s ass is pushed out, the way the muscles in his upper arms are flexing, in his thighs, just underneath the stretched-skin-tight jeans, light sheen of sweat coating his body.

All he can think is how if he was really gay for his brother, this would be an awesome view. Jesus fuck, why is he even thinking about this?

He hates all of their neighbors, unequivocally and absolutely. They’re completely responsible for this. Just like they’re responsible for Dean falling asleep with his head in Sam’s lap. For him dreaming about Sam stroking his head. It’s all their fault.

He remembers the time Sam had told him they’d had fans online, how they’d written stories about Sam and Dean being together _together_ , and wonders if they’d ever written anything like this. He doubts it, but he wouldn’t put it past them—anyone who’d imagine him and Sam together, knowing that they’re brothers…

It’s sick, and their neighbors would know that, if they had any idea Sam and Dean are actually related.

Disgusting, Dean thinks, taking another sip from his mug.

The writers know they’re related, but their neighbors don’t, and they still think…

_\--You **are** soulmates. You shared heaven.--_

_Shut up, Cas._

Dean watches for a while, Sam digging ineffectually at the ground, making almost no progress, and finally—more to get his brain to shut up than anything else, he decides—he sets his mug down and walks across the yard to where Sam and Castiel are. He squints in the afternoon sun, as he comes up behind Sam, watching what his brother’s doing as Sam sticks his ass out again, muscles straining as he forces the fork into the ground. 

He’s totally not thinking about fucking his brother. He’s _not_ , and _fuck_ their neighbors, anyway.

“What is that thing?” Dean finally asks.

He can see the tension in Sam’s shoulders, the way they stiffen at the sound of Dean’s voice, and he can practically hear Sam rolling his eyes. “It’s a spading fork, Dean.”

Dean’s silent for a long moment. “Don’t tell me. From the estate sale, right?

Sam throws an annoyed expression over one shoulder, voice tight. “Right.”

“Do you know how to use it? How the fuck do you even know what it is?”

From his left, Castiel says, “He bought a book.”

“You… bought a _book_?” Dean asks in disbelief. “On _gardening_? How are we even related?”

“Don’t remember asking you for help,” Sam snaps.

Jesus Christ.

“You’re doing it all wrong. Give me the goddamned thing.” Dean moves up beside Sam—still _not_ thinking about fucking his brother--and reaches out to take the spading fork. Sam snatches it away, out of Dean’s reach.

“You didn’t even know what it was called,” Sam says, anger clear in his voice. 

“I don’t know what the fuck a spading fork is, but I know how we broke ground on construction sites. Give it to me.”

“Screw you, I’m doing this.”

“Sam, give me the fucking thing.” Dean leans over to grab the thing out of Sam’s grip and Sam tugs it away—hard—both of them miscalculating in their hurry, and they flail, scrabbling at each other as they both fall to the ground, landing on their sides. 

“Why are you being so ridiculous about this?” Dean growls, beyond annoyed now, as he makes another grab for the spading fork. Sam switches the thing from one hand to the other, keeping it out of Dean’s reach. Dean pushes, grunting and shoving, struggling for leverage, and Christ when did Sam get so strong? One hand wrapped around his brother’s wrist, other prying for the spading fork, and Sam jerks, flips him over, long, heavy body pinning Dean against the ground, and Dean’s more conscious of it than he wishes he were, cursing his neighbors the whole time.

He can feel every bit of Sam against him, the way his muscles are flexing and—

Dean shoves at Sam in desperation, but Sam holds his momentary advantage, full weight pressed against Dean, hands holding Dean’s above his head, and Dean’s struggling underneath him and this is just... 

It’s not turning him on, it’s not. He’s just thinking about how it _would_ turn him on, if he were—

“You gonna stop this?” he asks, looking up at Castiel.

“Why would I do that?” Castiel asks, like he’s delighted. “I’m quite enjoying watching this,” he adds as Dean finally pushes up from the ground and throws Sam over.

 

*

 

A few minutes later, they’re lying side by side, grass-stained and smeared with dirt, breathing heavy, spading fork sticking out of the ground at an angle between them.

“You should’ve just given me the damned thing,” Dean gasps.

“Why? I thought you didn’t care about it anyway?” Sam’s still angry, and Dean doesn’t know where this is coming from.

“I was trying to help. Against my better judgment,” Dean adds.

“Really, Dean?” Sam asks as he grabs the spading fork and sits up, forearms resting on his knees as he glares at Dean. “You don’t care about anything else—why do you give a damn about the garden?”

“What?” Dean asks, angry all over again as he starts to sit up, too. “What the hell do you mean I--”

“I mean all you ever do is sit around and drink and laugh about how ridiculous everything is or get pissed off over it. You obviously don’t give a shit about any of it. Why are you even still here?” Sam demands angrily, as he pushes to his feet.

“Why am **I** still here?” Dean echoes, stunned. “Why are _you_ still here? Why’d you even wanna do this in the first place, Sam?”

“Because I thought maybe we could have a life,” Sam yells. “Because I thought after everything we’ve been through, maybe we could have something a little bit normal.”

“You call _this_ normal?” Dean laughs, sharp brittle sound as he gets to his feet, throwing an arm in the direction of Castiel and then the surrounding neighborhood. 

“At least _I’m trying_ , Dean,” Sam snaps, and then he throws the spading fork at the ground and spins on his heel, stalking off toward the house.

Jesus. _That’s_ what’s been going on? He had no idea…

And what is Dean supposed to do, anyway?

He can feel Castiel still standing there behind him, silently watching him, or maybe staring off into space while he eats popcorn.

Dean kicks the spading fork, starts for the house, and then stops, pulling it out of the ground and taking it with him.

 

 

He sits on the narrow bed in the basement, his back pressed against the cold iron plating of the wall, bottle of whiskey between his thighs, spading fork leaned up against the edge of the mattress.

The sheets and comforter smell of laundry soap and dryer sheets. Which means Sam washed them and put them back. No reason for Sam to do that, none at all. Even his compulsively neat brother wouldn’t bother to wash the basement sheets when there wasn’t a need. The only reason Sam comes down here is to do laundry. Theoretically, it’s the only reason any of them should come down here.

But still, here’s the bed, smelling fresh and clean. Sam might as well have written a note, pinned it to the plain, tan comforter: _If you’re going to hang out down here, at least do it on a clean bedspread, dumbass._

He almost wishes Sam _had_ left a note. It might make Dean feel less like shit, if he had.

But no. Just this silent reminder of Sam looking out for him, and it makes him angry, though he can’t figure out exactly why.

 _Maybe because Sam’s been trying and you really haven’t?_ And it’s that, but it’s more than that, too. He knows it’s more than that, even if he can’t work it all out right now.

He sits on the creaky bed, scent of dryer sheets surrounding him as he reaches into the box of Dale’s memories, pulling out a rolled up letter. He smoothes it open across his lap, messy scrawl of ink in faded cursive slowly revealed.

The date scribbled in the upper right hand corner reads June, 1980.

 _Dear Melinda,_ the first line reads, and Dean almost stops then, almost shoves the letter back into the box, because this isn’t even a letter someone wrote to Dale—this is a letter Dale wrote to someone else. A letter he never sent.

Dean can think of so many reasons Dale never sent this letter, so many reasons Dean doesn’t want to know. But he’s come this far, and Dale deserves someone to read it, doesn’t he? Melinda might never know, but at least someone will.

_Some nights, I wish it had been different. Some nights, I wish I had told you the truth. That I’d stayed. But I know it was better this way. Maybe you would have believed me. Maybe you would have loved me anyway. Maybe things would have been okay, for a while, and we could have had the kind of life you wanted, the kind of life I dreamed of having with you._

_I think about it all the time. What we could have had, if I’d been brave enough to tell you. You always said I never felt safe, and you were right. But it wasn’t you I didn’t feel safe with. I still barely feel safe in this house filled with iron and salt and guns. I remember waking up every time the walls in your house creaked, settling with age, the way you smiled and kissed me, told me it was just the house, that there was nothing to worry about._

_You didn’t know there was something to worry about. You didn’t know, and I loved that. I was hungry for it. For someone who didn’t know why I was afraid of the dark. Someone who could help me find my way out of it._

Dean pauses, taking a drink from his bottle. At least he’s always had Sam. Much as Sam might have hated hunting, at least he knew the truth after that Christmas when he was nine. And much as Dean might have hated Sam knowing the truth, at least he could always talk to Sam about the cases, the monsters. And for a little while, Sam had been grateful that Dean would tell him the truth. That didn’t last, everything fucked up between them until after Sam had gone to college. But it had gotten better, those first two years they’d been back on the road together, saving people, hunting things. Even the third year, as fucked up as it had been, Dean’s death looming on the horizon, they’d shared everything.

It wasn’t until after Dean came back from Hell that everything changed. That the distance between them had grown again. But even then, even _then_ , he’d always been able to tell Sam the truth. Even when it hurt. Even when it sucked.

And yeah. He’d maybe held back some things, no more than Sam had. Maybe as time went on, he’d lost his faith in his brother. But it hadn’t lasted.

Sam’s always been the one he could share everything with, and even if Dean decided not to, he always knew he _could_.

He remembers Cassie, her soft curves and challenging words, the way she’d reacted when he’d confessed the truth of his life to her. She’d been the only one in those three years without Sam that he’d ever told. And she’d thought he was crazy, shut him out.

He’s pretty sure Dale made the right decision, not telling Melinda. Lisa… she’d known. She’d seen with her own eyes, believed. But it didn’t make things any better.

Dean takes another drink, eyes skimming, finding the right place in the letter.

_I wanted someone to help me find my way out of the dark. I wanted to fall into you, let your innocence carry me, make me normal, absolve me. Some nights, I still want it, so bad I can taste it. But I know that wouldn’t have been fair to you. Maybe my history wouldn’t have caught up with me right away. Maybe the monsters looking for revenge would have taken some time to track me down. But they would have, eventually—they still will. This life always catches up with you in the end. I couldn’t stay and let my past take you down with me._

When Dean had lived with Lisa, he’d always known the past was out there, waiting to catch up with him, find him. He’d never been able to relax, let his guard down. He’d always been waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’d always been waiting for the demons to come, or for Lisa to tell him to get out. He’d always been waiting for the end. He’d done his best. He’d gone through the motions, walked through his days as a construction worker, shared a bed and a home with Lisa, had helped raise Ben the best he knew how. But he’d known then that he hadn’t belonged in that kind of life, and he knows it now. He doesn’t know how to do this any better than he did when he was with Lisa, and look at how that had ended up. Lisa and Ben with their memories wiped in the hopes that the demons would leave them alone. 

Now there’s nothing left to catch up with him.

But there’s still something to lose, isn’t there?

_\--You two have the most unhealthy, tangled up, crazy thing that I've ever seen--_

Lisa’s words echo through his mind, louder than the words written on the pages in front of him.

If Dean’s honest, living with Lisa and Ben had always felt temporary. He’d spent the entire year feeling like he was… waiting. He hadn’t known what he’d been waiting for until he’d woken up one day to see Sam’s face looking back at him. That’s when life had started to feel real again, when he’d felt like he could breathe again.

Sam’s the only thing he’s ever believed in completely; even when he didn’t trust Sam, Sam’s always been the only thing that ever mattered. 

Sam’s here, in this house that they’ve both signed their fake last names to. The one their neighbors think they’re fucking in.

Dean runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head.

Sam’s trying.

Dean looks at the spading fork and sighs.

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

He spends the afternoon in the backyard, muscles trembling with effort, sweating his ass off as he uses the spading fork to turn over dirt in a five by ten foot rectangle. The ground is hard on the surface, but it’s softer, darker beneath, rich brown turned over to meet the sun.

Ed stops by, waving at Dean over the mesh fence of the backyard. He stops by just to say hi, apparently, and Dean is exhausted, doesn’t know what else to do except let him into the backyard.

“Nice piece of land,” Ed nods, looking over Dean’s work. “What’re you gonna plant?”

“Tomatoes, cucumbers. The usual,” Dean shrugs, hoping he sounds sincere.

“My wife, she likes planting. Never saw the fun in it, myself.”

“Me neither,” Dean sighs in relief. “You want a beer?” 

“I’d love one.”

 

 

It’s hours later, well after sunset when Dean comes back inside and finds Castiel alone in the living room, watching a cooking show.

“Where’s Sam?” he asks, and Castiel points wordlessly up the stairs, eyes riveted on the TV screen.

Dean hurries up the stairs and knocks on Sam’s door. Sam’s bare to the waist, sweat pants slung low on his hips, and Dean’s excitement is briefly put on hold while he considers how seriously built his little brother is. Dean’s clearly interrupted him while he’s working out, because his muscles are pumped, even bigger than usual and he’s covered in sweat, glistening trail winding down the line between his pecs, and Dean kind of has to admit that—

He blinks, realizing what he’s doing just before he gets to the end of that thought. 

This has really got to _stop_.

Sam doesn’t say anything, just folds his arms across his chest and raises his brows in an annoyed, ‘what the fuck do you want?’ expression, and Dean remembers he came up here for a reason. It takes him a few seconds to find his place, but thankfully he manages.

“I was talking to Ed—the Sheriff—and I started thinking: being a cop.” Dean makes a ‘duh, right?’ motion at Sam, and Sam frowns like he’s confused, so Dean goes on. “That’s something I could be good at. Ed says they’ve got an academy in Sioux Falls. I figure you can fake me an associate’s degree, right? The course is six months, but I can work a side job until I graduate. We can work out the details, but, it’s perfect, right?”

Dean stands there, feeling extremely pleased with himself for a few more seconds.

“You’re serious?” Sam asks, like he can’t believe it. He looks angry, in fact.

“I thought you wanted us to get jobs. What’s the big deal, Sam?” Dean asks, perplexed and caught off guard.

“The big deal is if you’re a police officer, you’re putting yourself in danger—constantly. How is that different from being a hunter?”

Dean almost laughs—almost—but something in Sam’s voice keeps him from it. “Sam. The most exciting thing that’s ever happened around here is a couple of high school kids getting arrested for having marijuana. The closest thing they’ve ever had to a crime spree was some guy that kept running the red light in front of the library.”

Sam huffs and sputters in the confines of the hallway. “Yeah? So _far_. But how does our luck usually run, Dean?” 

“He’s got a point,” comes the voice from the couch downstairs, somewhat muffled by popcorn.

“Nobody asked you,” they shout at the same time, turning in that direction.

They both stop then, looking at each other, askance. Dean rolls his eyes and puts a hand to his face.

“Great. Next we’ll both be telling him to go to his room.” Dean pauses. “Except he doesn’t have one.”

Sam actually chuckles a bit at that. It’s a tiny, strained sound, but it’s better than nothing.

“Look,” Sam says after a moment, his voice calmer. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. Everything we went through… getting shot by a robber would be a really stupid way to die.”

“That could happen anyway, Sam, if someone breaks in.”

“Increases the chances by a hell of a lot when you’re out there patrolling for it every night.”

Dean really doesn’t have an answer for that, really can’t handle the emotion in his brother’s voice right now, not to mention how disappointed he is that Sam hates his brilliant idea. He sighs, rubbing a hand across his face. “Whatever. I’m going to bed.”

Sam looks at him for a long few seconds, not saying anything, and in the shadows of the hallway, Dean can’t quite make out his expression.

Dean guesses the slamming of Sam’s door on the way inside his room a split second later pretty much covers it.

“Fuck,” Dean mutters to the empty hallway. “It really _is_ like we’re married.”

“Told you,” comes the voice from the living room.

 

 

Dean tries, but he can’t understand this tension that’s been building between him and Sam since they moved in here. The days pass, and he looks for work that isn’t being a cop, something that might be interesting.

“What about Park Ranger?” Dean calls out to where Sam’s sitting on the laptop.

Sam takes the pencil from between his lips. “You’d be bored inside two days, tops.”

“I’d get to carry a gun,” Dean shoots back, re-reading the listing. Local plant recognition and knowledge. He knows a little bit about plants, he thinks, trying to remember. 

“Shit,” he mumbles to himself. “What’s poison ivy look like again?”

Sam turns toward him, answering. “I only showed you the picture a hundred times when we were kids. The only thing you could ever remember was that it had three leaves.”

“And how many times did that save my ass, huh?”

“Literally?” Sam asks, brows rising. “Most of your adult life.”

“See?” he grins, triumphant, and that gets just the tiniest smile out of Sam.

Okay, maybe Park Ranger shouldn’t be his first choice.

 

*

 

The doorbell rings a little later, and Dean looks up from the newspaper and turns, sees Castiel glued to the TV, doesn’t see Sam anywhere. He’s probably upstairs, ordering them wallpaper to match their curtains or something.

Dean pushes up from the desk and goes to answer it.

Sunny’s standing on the other side, and he can barely see her face through the bouquet of flowers she’s holding up.

“Hey, Dean,” she says, holding them out with a smile. “These are for you.”

Dean looks at the flowers, completely lost for a moment, and then reaches out to take them. “Hey, thanks,” he manages, summoning up a smile. “Flowers,” he adds, not able to find any other words.

“They’re Stephanotis. My mom planted them in the backyard ages ago. My nana used to call them Stephanies. She always said they brought good luck.”

Dean looks at the tiny white blossoms, the long green stems and skinny curled leaves. He wants to tell her she doesn’t have to keep thanking him, but she plows right on.

“I thought maybe you could use some luck. Not like you need it, but it never hurts to have extra, right?” She touches his forearm gently and gives him a sad little smile, and that’s when Dean realizes this doesn’t have anything to do with her thanking him at all. This is all about him. And Sam.

And in a really fucked up way, it’s kind of sweet.

“Thanks, Sunny.”

“No trouble at all,” Sunny smiles. “I gotta get to work. See you guys later.”

Dean looks down at the flowers in his hand and thinks maybe he could use a little luck at that.

 

*

 

Sam’s in the basement, doing laundry, and Dean walks the narrow stairs carefully.

“Brought you flowers, honey,” Dean says, trying for playful as he tests the waters. 

Sam is standing in front of the open dryer, pulling out clothes. He cranes his head over his shoulder, looking at Dean first, and then the flowers, doubtful.

Well, at least that’s better than the cold stare of death.

“Okay, Sunny brought us flowers. For luck. You know, for our relationship.” He walks up closer behind Sam, making a show of smiling about it, and shit, if they can’t make peace about anything, maybe they can at least laugh about this.

Sam doesn’t show any sign of cracking a smile as he turns back to the laundry.

Okay. Fine. He’ll try a different track.

“You know Naf thinks we’re having a threesome with Cas right? Of course you knew that. Our knitting circle and all.” Dean’s still a little annoyed about that, but he plays it up as funny anyway.

Sam, on the other hand, is dead serious. “Naf’s a douchebag. Nobody else thinks that.”

Which is… not at all a point Dean was trying to make, and kind of brings a few things home for him that he’d rather not have to recognize.

Sam is taking laundry from the dryer and folding it right there on top of the machine with quick, concise movements of his hands. “It’s not the worst thing they could think about us.”

Dean blinks, staring at Sam. “What could be worse, Sam?”

“That we’re murderers, maybe,” Sam answers, shrugging, still not looking at him. “That we started an apocalypse. That I was Lucifer’s vessel. That you--”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean grates reluctantly, nodding. “Fine. But what happens the first time I bring a girl back here? Or you do? What’re they gonna think then?”

Sam’s silent for a long moment.

“Hello? Earth to Sam?”

“Then go back to her place.” There’s something in his brother’s tone he can’t quite read, and he wishes he could see Sam’s expression.

“So you’re saying… we should let them think we’re together?” Dean asks, trying to get his head around it. “Play out like we’re… _having a relationship_?”

“I’m saying there’s no reason not to let them think it. Better than the questions they might have, otherwise.”

Dean still can’t get his brain to track the idea. It’s not like they haven’t played a gay couple before, but this isn’t a case. These are their neighbors that they’re going to be living around for the foreseeable future.

“For now, anyway,” Sam adds, shoulders lifting in a tight shrug.

“Right. Because that’s normal. That’s what we’re doing now, right? Being _normal_.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, keeps folding laundry like he didn’t hear Dean at all, and Dean is losing his patience.

“I don’t think you’re seeing the big picture here, Sam,” Dean’s voice rises a notch as he throws the flowers down on the washing machine, petals scattering across white-painted metal. “I’m living in a world where it’s better that most of the neighborhood thinks I’m fucking my soul-mate brother instead of fucking my soul-mate brother _and_ our mentally-challenged former-angel. Does that seem _normal_ to you, Sam?”

Sam goes calm, the kind of dead calm that just pisses Dean off even more, and he steps forward, grabs his brother by the shoulder and yanks him around.

Dean’s about to repeat the question when Sam’s face tightens, going hard as stone, hands reaching out and grabbing Dean, spinning them, shoving Dean back against the washing machine. Their faces are inches apart, Sam’s eyes blazing fire. He can feel Sam’s breath against his face, too surprised to react as he tries to figure out what’s going through his brother’s head. 

Sam’s still got one hand locked around one of Dean’s wrists, holding tight, thigh across one of Dean’s. “You don’t want this life, I get it. Fine. But it’s what we’ve got now.”

Like Dean doesn’t know that? Like Dean doesn’t know what this is? What it’s always been?

“I’m _trying_ ,” Dean growls, shoving his brother away, fury rising inside him, smashing everything in its path. “Not that I know _why_ the fuck I’m trying. I _suck_ at this. I did this already and I fucking _failed_.”

“Dean,” Sam starts, and Dean cuts him off, because goddammit, he’s had enough of this. 

“Why do you want me to do this with you, when you’re just gonna meet someone and run off anyway? What am I supposed to do, Sam?” he demands, gesturing furiously at the house. “Sit around drinking spiked coffee out of “World’s Greatest Grandma” mugs playing Rock Band and pretending everything’s fine until you get tired of playing house with your brother?”

And there it is, the other shoe—the thing Dean’s been dreading, deep down, all along—out in the open between them, finally. Like ripping off a scab, sharp pain as the wound bleeds, thick, sluggish, old hurt, and all of Dean’s anger drains with the feeling. This is why he didn’t want to settle down. This is what they’ve been working up to, this was always the only end game, and part of Dean’s known it all along. There’s only the rest, now; the breaking apart, the going their separate ways. Not for a little while, not until he gets over it, or Sam does, but for the rest of their lives.

“Just go, Sam. Do it now. Because I can’t…” _can’t believe in it_ , _can’t deal with how much it’ll hurt when you’re gone._

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Sam is shaking his head almost sadly as he looks at Dean.

“What is there to _get_ , Sam? I know what kind of life I’ve got ahead of me, drinking alone all day—or maybe with Castiel—dying old and gray and alone, like Dale. But you--”

“You are such a moron,” Sam hisses, and then he’s in Dean’s space, shoving Dean up against the washing machine, and Dean doesn’t understand what he’d said for Sam to react like this, hands rising to his brother’s shoulders to push him away in the span of a split second—and then Sam’s mouth is on his.

“I want this life with _you_ , Dean.” 

Dean feels the words hit him like a punch to the gut, leaving him wide open, wrecked and defenseless for a moment. Too stunned to react, brother’s mouth pressed to his, and he feels something twist in his belly, sparking fire at the feel of Sam’s lips against his. There’s warmth here, warmth and comfort like home, and strange as it is, for a second, Dean forgets, tongue flashing out across his lips, tasting his brother.

“Not some girl I might meet one day. You,” Sam breathes, teeth closing around Dean’s lower lip, and he’s shaking, hands on Dean’s face.

It almost makes sense, everything dancing on the head of a pin, the edge of a knife—

And then it all hits him, like a ton of bricks crashing down, and he pushes from the washing machine, using his hips and his arms, shoving Sam away, staring at him, breathing hard and shaking.

This is definitely not normal.

“We’re…” Dean struggles hard to figure out what exactly he’s supposed to say. “That did not just happen.”

“You kissed me, too.” Sam’s voice is quiet but strong, statement of fact that makes Dean want to curl into himself.

“You’re my _brother_.” Dean can barely stand to speak the words, throat constricting around them, can barely stand to see the stricken look on Sam’s face. He needs to get out of here, _now_.

But it’s Sam who moves first, nodding before he turns away, walking up the stairs without another look at Dean.

Dean waits until he can breathe again, one hand behind him on the washing machine, supporting his weight. He’s waiting for the world to turn right side up again, but after a few minutes, he realizes that’s probably never going to happen—probably never was, even before… _that_ \--and there are bottles of whiskey on the shelves down here that are seriously depressed from lack of attention.

 

 

He makes his way to the shelves and opens one, glass neck against his lips, taste pouring into him.

He drinks a quarter of it before he makes his way over to the bed, sitting down heavily. The smell of dryer sheets is almost cloying, a reminder of Sam, and Dean takes another drink, pulls the box from beneath the bed. Dean sits on the floor, letters yellowed with age held in his hands. The handwriting on this one is elegant script, faded with time, but still easily legible.

All the rest of the letters in the box, they’re in response to this one. The one Dale had gotten at a different address. The one he’d answered half a dozen times in the years following, but had never sent a single letter in response.

_I don’t care what’s in your past. I don’t care what it is you can’t tell me. Please, come back._

Melinda’s words, and Dean doesn’t doubt that she’d meant them, but she didn’t know. Didn’t understand.

\--I want this life with _you_ , Dean.—

Sam knows. Sam understands. Fuck, Sam knows everything about Dean that matters. And he still…

This is not what Dean should be doing. He shouldn’t be reading this—shouldn’t be reading any of these letters. What he _should_ be doing is getting very, incredibly drunk. And he’s working on it. But he can’t forget his brother’s words, the way he’d felt, pressed up against Dean, mouth hot, tongue flickering out.

It’s so wrong. So incredibly fucked up and twisted wrong. But Dean can’t ignore the tiniest part of him that had said ‘yes’ the moment Sam had touched him. The way it caught fire in his guts and grabbed hold of him. The way it still won’t go away.

Sam wants him. Wants _him_ to stay, to build a life together, the same way Sam had started building a life with Jess once. Sam doesn’t want to leave, not ever. And it’s all Dean could have wished for, except…

He runs the back of his hand across his mouth and takes another sip from his bottle. 

He can still feel exactly where Sam’s lips had touched his, the way Sam’s hands had been shaking as they closed around Dean’s face. He can’t forget, no matter how much alcohol he’s had, no matter how much he tries to rub away the sensation. Sam’s mouth against his, leaving behind a mark like a brand.

Yeah, he’s been thinking about Sam that way a little bit too, since he found out what their neighbors think... but not in a _real_ way… at least, he hadn’t been prepared for… he’d never really meant for…

Sam really wants to do _this_? With _him_? Dean doesn’t even understand how this is a real question that he’s having to consider—doesn’t understand what rabbit hole he’s fallen down that _these_ are the questions he’s asking himself.

Shit. He’s still having questions, which means he hasn’t had nearly enough to drink.

He tips the bottle up and takes a few long gulps, whiskey burning a trail down to his stomach that warms him from the inside, makes the world around him a little less focused.

He thinks back to the beginning, where this all started, on a battlefield in Ohio. About the way he’d reached out, laced his fingers through Sam’s and held his brother’s hand when he’d thought they were going to die fighting the leviathans. 

_You and me, Sam._

_Just like always._

The way Sam’s fingers had squeezed his, strong and resolved and _there_.

There’d been no thought for Lisa or Ben. No thought for anything either one of them might be leaving behind. They were going to die together, and that was okay. It was all okay, as long as they did it together. It was never even a question.

But this…

Dean stares at the bottle resting against his thigh, watching how it diverges and splits into two clear images. Two of his right hands each holding a half full bottle. He lifts his other hand, covering his left eye and sees one right hand holding one bottle, tries to remember what he’d been thinking about and then marvels at the fact that he hasn’t seen double since those twins he’d brought back to the motel room in…

Shit, what was he thinking about?

Bed, his brain says, distinctly, and he nods drunkenly in agreement. And it’s right here with the cheerful smell of dryer sheets, just a turn and an awkward clamber away, body rolling over, yanking the covers open and settling on his side underneath them, back pressed against the iron wall.

He sleeps, face pressed against the scented pillowcase, and he dreams.

He dreams of Melinda, with long, dark hair and bright blue eyes, freckles scattered across her cheekbones. She’s lying on her side next to Dean, facing him, eyes silently pleading.

“Stay,” she whispers, touching his cheek.

Her face changes, rippling like water, settling into familiar features, hazel eyes that look so deep inside him that he wants to hide, but he can’t.

“Stay with me,” Sam whispers, fingers flexing against Dean’s face. “Don’t leave me, Dean.”

“Where else would I go?” Dean whispers back, hand reaching out to touch Sam. Warmth of his brother’s body so close, feel of him against Dean’s fingers. 

Sam pulls him closer, bodies clinging together, Sam’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, and Dean sinks into it, lets the comfort of it carry him away, descending into darkness with the feel of his brother’s lips pressed against his forehead.

 

*

 

Dean wakes with a throbbing headache, tongue glued to the roof of his mouth, his hand touching the mattress where he almost expects to find—

He blinks hard against the dryness of his eyes, but there’s nothing there. Of course there isn’t. That had been a dream.

Memories of the night before jingle-jangle around in his brain, broken, disjointed pieces that leave him with a feeling of dread in his belly.

It’s an effort, making it to the shelves with the bottled water and cracking one open. He drinks the first one in one continuous gulp and opens a second, sucking down about half of it before he feels sated. His head still hurts, and Sam still kissed him last night, but at least he’s not dying of thirst anymore. 

Food would be better. Food will fix this by about 50%, he figures. But the usual food would mean crawling up the stairs to the kitchen and possibly facing Sam—or even worse, an overly cheerful Castiel who’s confused and wants to know why he spent the night in the basement. He cocks his head, listening for any sounds coming from the open door at the top of the stairs.

He doesn’t hear anything. But he grabs a CLIF Bar from the shelf anyway and eats it, downing the rest of his water bottle behind it. Makes his way back to the bed and falls into it on his back, one arm slung across his forehead, blinking against the basement light.

When he wakes again later, there are definite sounds from upstairs, the clang and clatter of pots and pans, the television droning in the background. 

“I made grilled cheese,” Sam yells down the stairs a little bit later, and Dean wants nothing more than to stay right here, but it’s _grilled cheese_ , and he knows Sam made it like he loves it, because he can smell bacon in the air, and Sam’s voice sounds so normal, like nothing happened last night, and maybe they can…

What? Move past his brother kissing him?

_\--You kissed me, too--_

But there’s bacon. Maybe…

Yeah, okay. They’re never moving past that. And Dean might as well stop hiding and go face it, because if he doesn’t, Sam will come down here and _make_ him face it, and maybe if he just goes upstairs and acts like it never happened, too, they’ll get by somehow. It’s gotten them through a lot of other things.

 

*

 

The grilled cheese is perfect, and he eats it sitting on the fucking _settee_ , Castiel sitting between him and Sam—who still hasn’t looked at him—as they watch a nature documentary on wolves. Wolves, as it turns out, mate for life only as long as the mate lives. There’s a mourning period, but they move on, mate with another, eventually.

Dean thinks that seems healthy. At least until he starts thinking about if Sam died now—for good, forever. No more supernatural chances to bring him back. Game over.

Would he move on? Would he find someone like Lisa and live out his life like that? He can’t really see it happening. It’s not like he’s ever been any good at living a normal life. At least when Sam was in the cage there’d always been the hope of getting him back somehow—some mornings that hope was the only thing that got Dean out of bed. If Sam dies now there’s no hope of getting him back, and Dean can’t even imagine living in a world like that. Dean might as well be dead, too.

Which basically means he doesn’t even have the emotional maturity of a wolf. And that he’s thinking in terms of being mated to his brother, which is just... 

_\--You **are** soulmates--_

He shoots Castiel a glare and snatches the remote from him, changing the channel.

 

 

He and Sam circle each other in the days that follow, not talking about anything important, and things don’t feel right, but they feel like they’re passable—even if Dean can’t stop thinking about the feel of Sam’s mouth against his. Thankfully, he’s a master at ignoring the obvious; it’s the Winchester way.

Sunny invites them over for Rock Band, and he and Sam both pass, but Castiel springs up like a weed with a grin on his face like he’s reporting for duty. Bob hooks Dean up with a deal on supplies to repair the upstairs bathroom and enough eggshell-gloss cream-colored paint to re-paint the entire inside of the house. 

And it goes on like that, as normal as can be. Until a few days later, in the shower, hot water stinging against his skin, Dean tilts his head back against the cool tiles and lets it run over him, slicks his fist with soap and runs it down the half-hard length of his dick. Quick, hard tugs until it fills his palm, aching hard, and it’s been a while, and he can almost feel sweet, slick lips sucking his cock, can almost see the hot blonde looking up at him with cat-green eyes. 

_Can_ see her, until he looks down, sees hazel eyes staring back, hair dark brown, sharp cheekbones, hollowed out between their cut and the jaw line. Sam’s eyes staring back at him, and it’s so fucking wrong, but he feels the way it kicks against his gut, balls tightening—

Jesus fucking Christ. He yanks his hand from his cock, turning and pressing his forehead against the tiles, trying hard to breathe.

By the time he can, the water has run cold, goose bumps rising across his skin. He shuts off the faucet, hand squeezing tight around the knob.

This whole thing has gone way too far. He _needs_ to get out of this house, meet some hot girl and get laid. Main Street is about five blocks over, and a few blocks up from there, there’s not one, but two bars, nearly side by side. There have to be some good looking locals hanging around. 

He just hopes none of his neighbors are there.

 

 

He just misses Sam on his way out, avoids Castiel’s questioning looks as he closes the door behind him.

The walk is nice, sun setting as he walks, pink and purple clinging at the edge of the horizon between houses. The bar is nice, too, quiet and filled with wooden tables and chairs and stools, hardwood floor buffed shiny. It’s clean, jukebox pouring out classic rock, and the bartender doesn’t look at him twice as he fills a glass with whiskey. It’s a little while before the evening crowd rolls in, and when it does, it isn’t huge.

Marianne is tiny brunette with a huge rack and a spitfire personality, and Dean’s pretty sure he’s hit the jackpot when she turns out to be not just gorgeous but also a mechanic with a love for classic cars. He’s almost sorry he didn’t bring the Impala, the way her face lights up when he tells her about it—but he wasn’t completely sober when he left the house, and he sure as hell doesn’t plan on being anywhere near sober when he heads back. So he tells her all about it, instead, voice dropping low and gritty, grinning at her when she tells him to stop turning her on.

Apparently it really does turn her on, because a little while later she asks him if he wants to play pool in the back room, and that turns out to be code for getting him alone in a small, dim room and shoving him up against a wall. Her mouth is hot and wet, and she tastes like the rum and coke she’s been drinking, tongue sliding inside his mouth, circling his. Dean grabs hold of her and pulls her in, tiny, curvy body pressed up against him, hands sliding down her waist to her hips, and it’s been a while since he’s done this, but it’s like riding a bike, really, hands riding the curve of her ass, fingers squeezing as he kisses down into her.

“Wanted to see if you were as good with your tongue and hands as you are at sweet talking before I take you home,” she whispers.

“I take it I passed the test drive?” he asks, smirking.

She grins and kisses him again, rougher this time, tongue plunging into his mouth, body pushing upward into him, and this is more like it. It’s nothing like the way Sam kissed him, this is a little clumsy but still good, different than the way Sam’s tongue had flickered inside his mouth, just brushing Dean’s, tasting him, the way Sam’s teeth had closed around his lower lip, sharp and sweet, his hands on Dean’s face. Different than the way Dean had kissed him back, tongue swirling around his brother’s, testing out the way it felt, hot and sleek and not like anything else.

Marianne moans into his mouth, and he realizes how tight he’s holding her, how desperately he’s kissing her, every muscle and nerve in his body focused on the way he’s using his tongue and moving his hands. She’s getting kind of desperate herself, and he wonders if Sam would be like this, if Sam would grab him by the face and drag him in deeper, moaning into his mouth, grinding up against him through their clothes.

God, why the fuck is he thinking about his brother when he’s about to get laid? Jesus Christ. He refocuses his thoughts, grabbing Marianne by the shoulders, turning her around against the wall, body shoved up against hers, hips rocking into hers as he lets his mouth trail from hers, biting and licking his way down the column of her throat, tonguing at her pulse, feeling her shudder and moan against him.

He wonders if Sam would react like this, come apart underneath his mouth, moaning and tugging at Dean, head tipping back to give Dean better access to his throat, Dean’s hands tangling in his hair as he takes his time tracing out every inch of hot skin down to the vee of his throat. Dean’s teeth nipping along the line of his collarbone, brother’s voice raggedly whispering out, “God, Dean.”

He opens his mouth, and the name he’s about to breathe back is most definitely not Marianne.

She pushes him back, and it takes him a moment to focus his eyes on her face, to realize he wasn’t at all where he thought he was, or with who he thought he was with, seeing Sam’s face so clearly for a split second that it’s almost a shock when his features realign and solidify into Marianne’s.

“Come home with me,” she begs, panting out the words, face flushed, lips red and swollen from their desperate kissing, and Dean feels his stomach drop out. 

Oh. God.

“I can’t.” The words are out of his mouth before he knows he means to say them.

“What?” The way her face falls makes Dean feel so guilty that he momentarily considers going home with her anyway.

“It’s not you… I…”

“Oh, shit.” Her expression goes from slack with lust to full of panic inside a second. “You’re married, aren’t you?”

Dean doesn’t think he could explain if he tried. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

He’s almost to the door when she yells out, “Asshole.”

He figures it’s the least he deserves.

 

 

He drinks the entirety of his hip flask on the walk home. He can’t jerk off without thinking about Sam, and apparently even making out with someone else isn’t enough to make him stop thinking about Sam, never mind fucking someone else, because he’s pretty sure he knows where that would end, too.

What the fuck is he supposed to do with this? Sam is his brother, for fuck’s sake. He can’t _do_ this… he can’t live like this. Shit, he can’t even go inside the house they’re living in, falling against the grass in the front yard, tipping his flask up at a severe angle, hoping there might be a little bit left inside.

There’s maybe a drop or two left, and he wants to go inside, grab a bottle, but Sam’s in there, probably waiting up for Dean, and he... he can’t.

A motion from the corner of his eye pulls his attention. Esmerelda is dressed in a kimono robe cinched in the front, silken nightdress rippling around her calves in the breeze, slippered feet nearly silent against the grass. She’s got a cigarette between her middle and ring finger as she stops in front of him and puffs on it, surveying him.

“Bad night?” she asks mildly, like he isn’t half-drunk sitting on the grass of their front yard at 1AM with a flask in his hand.

Dean thinks he loves her. He really does.

“What gave it away?” he asks, deadpan.

She cracks a grin at him and leans down, winking like she’s telling him a secret. “Lucky guess.”

Yeah, he definitely loves her.

“All right. Come on, on your feet,” she motions him up with her free hand. “Don’t make me have to carry you.”

“I’d actually like to see that,” Dean says, sincere as he gathers himself, pushes up from the ground.

“Your ego would never survive,” she grins at him.

“After the night I’ve had, I think it could probably stand a little more.”

She purses her lips, considering him for a moment, and then she reaches out, thumb rubbing at his lower lip. “Your night’s written all over your face. Lipstick on your mouth, and here you are in the front yard of your house getting soused. Doesn’t take a genius, honey.”

Shit. She thinks he cheated on Sam, and how fucked up is that? Not even close to as fucked up as the way Dean feels like maybe he _did_ , Jesus fucking Christ.

“I didn’t,” he says quickly. “I mean it wasn’t…”

When he trails off, she wraps an arm around his shoulders, turning him in the direction of the house. “If memory serves, there’s a porch swing up here somewhere.”

Dean lets her guide him to the porch, each of them sitting down on either end of the swing, which puts them maybe a foot apart.

Dean leans forward, elbows resting against his knees, fingers lacing together.

“I didn’t go home with her,” he says, needing her to know, because apparently he actually gives a shit what she thinks about him, even if he’s feeding into the lie of him and Sam being together, which might not really be such a lie after all, because, hey, wow, thinking about his brother while he made out with someone else.

Esmerelda nods, puts her slippered feet against the old wood of the porch, toes pushing the swing backward. “My Carl. He was a producer in Hollywood, and you know I was an actress. We met on the set of “The Thing From Outer Space”, and…” a thin smile twists her lips, “from the first second we talked, we both knew.” Her eyes go far away with memory, that smile still curving her mouth. “I’d dated a lot of guys before him, but he… he scared the hell out of me. He was the real deal. He was the last stop.”

Dean swallows hard, nodding.

“He loved me. Every bit of me, the good and the bad, and I wanted to run away. But I couldn’t. I had to know. You reach a point in life where you have to calculate the odds and take a chance, and he was mine.” She lifts one shoulder inside her robe. “I rolled the dice on a pretty sure bet. Never was sorry.”

Dean chews at his lower lip. “So you won.”

“Yes and no. It was a few years later when we quit Hollywood for good and moved out here to be alone together. I grew up on a farm, so a town this small was almost like coming home. It was a lot smaller back then than it is now.” She presses her lips together across a sad smile. “We were happy. Not as long as we expected to be, but the time we had, we were.”

“When did he... pass way?”

“Not long after we were both fifty. Heart condition.”

Dean can’t even imagine. Making it as far as fifty, thinking there were years and years ahead. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s been a long time, but it still hurts. My Carl…” she smiles, sad but somehow fierce, “never was another one like him. We didn’t get near long enough together, but it was worth it.”

“Even though you lost him?”

“I’d do it again,” she nods, and in the barest hint of moonlight, Dean can see the girl she’d been once. “No regrets. You never know how much time you’ve got. Best make it count while you can.”

He wonders what she’d say if she knew Sam was his brother.

He wonders if it matters.

“I don’t even know how to walk through the door,” he admits.

“One foot at a time usually works.” She sends him a sidelong smirk. “I’d invite you stay at my place, but unless you like cats sleeping all over you, I doubt you’d be comfortable.”

“Esmerelda, are you propositioning me?” he asks with a grin.

“Oh, honey, don’t flatter yourself,” she laughs, patting his cheek. “You’re cute, but you’re not cute enough for the kind of trouble that’d cause. You’re awfully young to be spoiled for life.”

He really does love her, grins and kisses her on the cheek, helps her up from the swing. 

She sees herself off, and Dean watches her go, her fingers wiggling at him under the moonlight as she disappears from his line of vision, leaving Dean staring at the front door.

All he has to do is go inside. Talk to Sam. Tell him the truth. If he knew what the truth was.

Shit. He knows what the truth is. He just isn’t ready to deal with it. Ever.

_Man up. Get in there and fuck your brother._

And, no. That’s… he can’t. And a serious, heartfelt, ‘fuck you’ to whatever entity is speaking for his brain right now. It’s either God—which he’s pretty sure it isn’t, because, _God_ \--or his dick. He’s 99% sure that it’s his dick. Even if he thinks God’s an asshole, he’s pretty sure even God’s not _this_ much of an asshole.

He just needs to get past the living room, get past Sam and just _sleep_. Yeah, Esmerelda made some points, but Dean is pretty sure he’s never going to be ready to deal with them. 

_But it makes sense, doesn’t it?_

No. He stops with one hand close to the door knob. It makes the kind of sense that doesn’t.

Yeah, maybe Dean would want to die without the chance of having Sam around. Yeah, maybe they’re soulmates. Fuck Castiel for making that point. But… but they…They’re brothers. It’s family love.

Which is why Dean made out with Marianne earlier, imagining her as Sam. It makes perfect sense. 

Fuck. Dean runs a hand across his jaw. He is so screwed. Truth is, he’s pretty sure he knew he was screwed before he even left the house tonight, and neither Marianne nor Esmerelda have done a whole lot to help him keep his crumbling walls of denial from shattering. Hell, even Dale’s letters aren’t helping, and Cas sure as hell isn’t helping.

But he can’t. He can’t just…

The front door opens, startling him from his train of thought, warm lamplight spilling out onto the porch, throwing Sam’s long, tall body into sharp relief for an instant before Dean’s eyes adjust, moonlight filling in the features of his brother’s face. 

Esmerelda may have wiped away the lipstick on his face, but his night is still written all over him, he can tell by the look Sam’s giving him—disbelief and disappointment, and Sam knows, of course he does. Sam always knows. Dean’s sure Sam had known where Dean was headed the second he’d found out Dean had left. Nearby, the wind chimes ring their rich, gentle tones, peaceful, and Dean thinks the sound doesn’t belong here, in this moment.

“Have fun?” There’s something cold in the tone of Sam’s voice, the set of his eyes, something that makes Dean’s chest ache. Guilt twists like a razor edge inside him, and it’s so crazy, standing here on the front porch of the house they live in, Dean feeling guilty for kissing someone besides Sam, so fucked up that he gets angry all over again.

“Yeah. It was fucking awesome,” he says, dripping sarcasm, grabbing hold of the anger and hanging on tight as he pushes past his brother. It carries him through the feel of Sam’s body brushing against him, through noting Castiel’s absence on the couch, the brief debate of heading for the basement, and then Sam’s slamming the door shut, turning on him. 

Sam’s only wearing a pair of pajama pants, feet and upper body bare, and Dean really wishes his brother was wearing more, because the sight of that much bare skin is really not helping him hold onto his anger. Dean’s already had enough to drink and enough thinking about Sam like that tonight that he isn’t sure how much more he can stand before he breaks. 

Sam rolls his lower lip underneath his teeth, brows dark and drawing together as he shakes his head, and Dean knows that’s his “We have got to talk” expression, but Dean’s momentarily distracted by the way Sam is tugging at his lip with his upper teeth, and god dammit. 

“Dean,” Sam says, like doesn’t even know where to start, and Dean really can’t blame him, because it’s not like Dean knows where to start, either.

But he’s tired, and he’s drunk, and feeling guilty and he never could stand to see Sam looking at him the way his brother is right now, like he’s hurt and lost and doesn’t know what to say.

“She kissed me,” Dean confesses quietly, eyes dropping from his brother’s gaze. He isn’t sure where the words are coming from, or what he’s going to say next, but he can’t seem to stop them. “All she did was kiss me. Pushed me up against the wall in the back of the bar and rubbed up against me… and all I could think about was… was when you…”

He can’t look at Sam, can’t finish his sentence, can barely stand to be inside his own skin, pit of his stomach shriveling up.

“When I what, Dean?” Sam demands, and there’s the barest tremble in his voice as he takes a step closer.

Something in Dean snaps at the sound of that quiver in Sam’s voice, and he’s moving before he can think about what he’s doing, driven by the sheer feeling that he _has_ to do this, has to _know_. His mouth hits Sam’s at an awkward angle, but then Sam’s moving to meet him, match him, hands coming up around the back of Dean’s neck, pulling him in. Mouths opening, hot and eager, tongues diving and circling as they taste each other, Sam making a noise against Dean’s mouth that hits him right in the gut, brother’s hands curling into fists in the lapels of Dean’s jacket and yanking him in deeper. Dean gets his hands on either side of Sam’s face, kissing up into him with just as much want, and it’s surreal, part of him withering with how good it feels, the rest of him needing this too much. It’s nothing like kissing Marianne at all, his little brother even hotter, more desperate, all sleek, aggressive tongue and biting teeth, hands gripping Dean like he’s afraid if he lets go Dean will stop.

And that’s okay, because Dean doesn’t have any intentions of stopping, sickness in his belly lessening to an uncomfortable curl and fading fast as he gets his hands in his brother’s hair, tugging and pulling, tipping Sam’s chin up, teeth closing around his jaw, skating down his throat, tongue slipping out to taste the hot skin, beat of his brother’s heart against the tip. 

Sam makes this little hitching noise in his throat when Dean’s teeth nip at his pulse that makes Dean suddenly, profoundly aware of how hard he is—how hard they both are, bodies sealed together so tight that Dean can feel every inch of him, solid and muscular, brother’s cock slotted up against Dean’s through his pajamas, and for a second, just the feel, just the idea of Sam being hard for him hits him in a rush, makes his cock twitch, tip pulsing out beads of pre-come.

He knows how wrong it is, feels it turn over in his guts before it’s buried underneath molten heat and the need to feel even more of Sam against him. He starts to pull back far enough to get out of his clothes, and Sam clenches his fists in Dean’s jacket and growls—actually fucking growls—and the sound hits Dean’s brain in a rush of pure pleasure. He grabs Sam by the hips instead, thumbs curling inside the waistline of his pajamas and underwear, pushing and tugging, and Sam catches on, tearing at Dean’s jacket, Dean letting go long enough for Sam to rip him out of it. Sam rips him out of his shirt, too, and Dean thinks he actually hears it tear on the way off, and then Sam’s against him again, mouths devouring each other, fumbling out of most of the rest of their clothes on the way to the couch, until they’re lying on it naked, Sam underneath Dean, fingers of one hand wrapped tight around the back of Dean’s neck as he kisses up into Dean hungrily, other in a death grip around Dean’s hip, hips arching into Dean’s.

Dean hisses, biting down against his brother’s lip at the feel of Sam’s cock rubbing against his, smooth, velvety skin so hot and hard against Dean that it’s all Dean can do not to come right there, little brother rocking up into him like he’s dying for more. He sucks in a breath and moves his hips, gliding back down, then rolling into his brother, feels Sam groan into him, and the way it feels, fuck, cocks sticky with pre-come, slotted together, rutting against each other, lips and teeth kissing and biting everywhere they can reach, brother’s muscles rippling and twitching under Dean’s hands.

Everything a blur of sensation and Sam and _so good_ , and then Sam leans up, closes his teeth around Dean’s throat, biting and licking his way up to Dean’s ear, both of them sweating and shaking as Sam whispers, “Want you inside me, Dean. Want you to fuck me. Wanna feel you do it.”

The words go straight to Dean’s dick, and he nearly bites through his lower lip, whole body shuddering and stilling as he tries not to come all over his brother right there. “Jesus Christ, Sam. Jesus fucking _Christ_ ,” he groans, teetering right on the edge, nails digging into Sam’s skin to keep holding on. 

It’s sick and it’s wrong and it scares the hell out of him and just the _idea_ is turning Dean on so much that he’s ready to come like he’s barely fifteen and getting his first piece of ass all over again. 

“Wanna fuck you, too,” Sam breathes wickedly, tongue lashing out against Dean’s ear. “Want to watch you while I--”

“Shut up,” Dean growls, trembling, cock twitching out another ragged spurt of pre-come, mouth a hot smear against his brother’s to make him stop. “God, shut up.”

“Fuck, Dean,” Sam growls back, hands seizing against Dean’s skin as he feels Dean’s dick jerk, “feel so good.” Sam practically purrs the words, hips grinding up into Dean, cocks skidding and slipping in the slick between them. Dean can taste blood in his mouth, hand fisting in the strands of Sam’s hair, yanking his brother’s head back, teeth buried in the curve where his brother’s neck meets his shoulder as he shoves his hips, whole body surging out through his cock as he comes, spilling all over his brother’s dick, his belly, grinding back into the wet slickness between their skin.

Sam comes right behind him with a muffled shout, body tensing underneath Dean, fingernails drawing blood, and it just makes Dean come even _harder_ , everything else ceasing to exist as they thrust and rut, fingers and teeth dug deep into the other’s body, quaking and shivering and muttering out curses against skin. 

Long slow back and forth of hips, teasing out aftershocks, both of them shuddering, still clinging together, Sam’s mouth turning to find his, opening wet and hot. Tongues twining, more artfully than before, slow and easy circling, and Dean never would have suspected any of this about Sam. That he’d be so aggressive, so needy, so talkative and still… like this, exploring Dean’s mouth so carefully, like he’s tracing out every contour, fingers trembling against Dean’s face.

This part, Dean would have guessed, but the rest… it turns out there are still a few things Dean didn’t know about his little brother. Things he maybe didn’t need to know. Things he probably should _never_ know. Okay, things brothers should _definitely_ never know about each other.

Dean shouldn’t have done this, he knows he shouldn’t have, and part of him—still the smaller part of him—wants to run away. But it’s Sam. It’s Sam, and he…

God. It’s _Sam_ , and he just—

“Dean. Stop.” Sam whispers the words against Dean’s mouth, and there’s part of Dean that wishes he could stop, but it’s starting not to be the smaller part—

“So I should sleep upstairs then?” Castiel’s voice cuts through the silence between them.

What the fucking—

Dean moves, grabbing for the blanket on the back of the couch, yanking it down around himself and Sam as he half turns to look at Castiel standing just inside the front door.

“How long have you been there?” Dean asks, still trying to catch his breath, and it’s a stupid question, because Castiel could have just walked in and it would still be obvious _right now_ what they’d been doing.

“I… didn’t want to interrupt while you were…” Castiel makes a gesture at them with one hand. 

Oh, fuck. Oh, this is awesome. It’s so much awesome and Dean’s so worn out that he can barely summon the emotion this moment deserves.

“Sleep in my room,” Sam says, like that’s some kind of logical answer. Like none of this is happening and they’re just discussing usual sleeping arrangements. 

Castiel nods, a bit drunkenly, bidding them good night just like none of this is actually happening and then sways up the stairs. Which is more evidence that he was over at Sunny’s playing Rock Band, as if there were ever any doubt since that’s the only time he leaves the house, which is really so not the point. Castiel just saw them—shit probably just _watched_ them—practically fucking on the settee, and he didn’t even bat an eye. Well, maybe except for the part where he _watched_ , which is weird and Dean doesn’t really want to think about that, or what else Castiel might be going to do upstairs with his own very human body.

How is he here? How is this his life?

Dean waits until Castiel shuts the door to Sam’s room, and then he throws back the blanket, getting on his feet and gathering up his clothes, his shoes from the living room floor. He can feel Sam’s eyes on him the whole time, has so much that he wants to say, but he can’t, won’t, and finally makes the walk upstairs with all the remnants of his clothing wrapped around him.

Yeah, now’s a good time to be modest, after the former angel’s seen you grunting and coming all over your brother, not to mention that you came all over your little brother who also just saw you naked, not to mention the way you just _came_ all over each other. A good night’s sleep and daylight’ll cure _that_. Jesus. Dean pushes open the door to the room that’s his, almost grateful for once to see the bed waiting there for him, double mattress with roosters thrown back in a tangled mess from the white pillows.

Dean lets his things drop to the floor and walks to the bed, can’t really take the time this needs to process right now. He slides underneath the comforter, pulling it across him, knees pulled up to waist level as he faces the wall, moonlight slanting across the pale paint in slats in front of his eyes. He shouldn’t have left like that, except that he absolutely _should have_ , and that shouldn’t have happened, can never happen again, except for how he’s sure it’s going to. And he’s sorry, but there’s part of him that isn’t, part of him that wishes…

He’s still chewing on the thought when the knob to his door turns, and he doesn’t move, doesn’t look back. Can feel Sam standing there, waiting for some kind of signal. He shouldn’t, but he already practically had sex with his brother, and so he scoots closer to the wall, leaving room. He hears the door shut, feels Sam get into bed behind him, body turning on his side, not quite touching Dean, one hand reaching out slowly, tentatively to touch his hip.

He’s sure his first instinct shouldn’t be to back into the warmth at his back. He’s sure of it. And that’s why he doesn’t do it. Except for how he does, and Sam’s arm wraps around his chest, brother’s head resting against Dean’s shoulder. This whole thing is weirder anything Dean’s ever experienced, which is saying a lot, and he’s so comfortable that he falls asleep so fast his head spins.

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

When Dean wakes in the morning, eyelashes fluttering open, the sun is falling in long slants of light across the wall in front of him, and there’s something holding him down, heavy weight across his thigh, his shoulder. His first instinct is to panic, and then he feels the warmth of the long body pressed up against him, fitted to him like second skin, the hot breath against the back of his neck. 

_Sam._

He’s naked and Sam’s sleeping in his bed, clinging to Dean like Dean’s a life preserver and he’s drowning. Dean’s got no problem with women wanting to cuddle after sex, hell, he kind of enjoys it, to tell the truth, but this is his brother, and it’s really fucking _weird_. And maybe he’s still kind of enjoying it anyway, which is even weirder.

He’s not drunk enough to handle this right now.

He guesses they can’t pretend last night never happened. They’re Winchesters, but even they’re not that good. And Cas saw them...

Yeah. He’s never going to be drunk enough to handle this.

He feels frozen, at a loss for what to do. It’s not like they can pretend it didn’t happen, but he can’t just lie here and pretend he’s okay, either. 

Against and behind him, Sam shifts, and Dean can feel the thick hardness of his brother’s cock snugged up against his ass through the thin separation of Sam’s pajama pants.

_“Wanna fuck you, too. Want to watch you while I--”_

Fuck. Dean can imagine it all too easily, and it turns him on almost as much as he knows it shouldn’t be.

No. Last night was a slip, last night he was _drunk_. He can’t do this again, especially not while he’s sober and capable of walking away.

He’s just decided to get out of bed and leave the room before Sam has a chance to say anything when his brother’s fingers brush against his half-hard dick. He jolts at the sensation, and his traitorous cock gets even harder, and by the time he remembers to move, Sam’s slipping his other arm underneath Dean, wrapping around Dean’s waist and pulling him in tighter.

“Sam,” he whispers, and the protest sounds weak, even to his own ears.

“Come on, Dean. Let me,” Sam whispers in his ear, fingers stroking up the length of Dean’s cock, thumb teasing at the slit.

He could say no, he could pull away from the circle of his brother’s arm around him, but it’s so much easier to lie here, to let Sam do this to him. To imagine Sam’s holding him still against his will, making him take it. 

Fuck, the thought shouldn’t be so _hot_ , shouldn’t make Dean moan and make his dick go rock hard.

Sam seems to sense what’s turning Dean on, because the fingers of the arm wrapped around Dean reach for Dean’s wrist and close around it, holding Dean’s arm against his body, body still pinned inside the circle of Sam’s arm. His other arm is trapped underneath the weight of his own body, and now he really _can’t_ move. He relaxes against his brother’s body then, and he can feel Sam grip him even tighter, surer, fingers clamping down around his wrist.

The arm around his waist squeezes him tight, Sam rocking his hips, rubbing his dick against Dean’s ass, and Dean’s mouth goes dry, heart pounding, cock aching hard. When Sam’s fingers close around it, Dean’s hips jolt of their own accord.

“Hold still or I’ll tie you down,” Sam whispers, voice rough and heavy with promise.

Jesus Christ. Dean shudders, delicious shiver running through him at the thought. It’s wrong, God so wrong, to imagine his little brother tying him to the bed, Dean not being able to move or do anything while Sam does anything and _everything_ he wants to Dean, and Dean doesn’t know what the fuck’s wrong with him that he’s thinking about this and getting off on it. Maybe he’s even sicker and more twisted than he thought.

Sam’s fist closes around his cock again, squeezing and tugging up the length, and Dean groans, head tipping back against his brother’s shoulder.

“Maybe I’ll tie you down later, anyway,” Sam goes on, whispering wickedly into Dean’s ear, hand tugging back down. Sweet, dry fiction of Sam’s palm and fingers around him, pulling languidly to the top, pausing there, thumb painting in the pre-come leaking from the tip. “Or maybe just hold you down and fuck your mouth. Such a hot fucking mouth, Dean. Be a shame not to use it.”

Jesus… Jesus fuck. Dean moans and twists inside his brother’s embrace, shaking with the effort of keeping his hips still, Sam’s hand stroking him torturously close to the edge, brother grinding his dick into Dean’s ass in perfect time with the rhythm, hips forcing Dean’s cock through his fist.

“Imagined fucking it so many times…” Sam’s voice fills his head, dripping sin and sex, “maybe I should just take what I want.” Teeth closing tight around Dean’s earlobe for a moment, verging on the edge of painful, “Push my cock past your lips, shove all the way inside, feel your throat flutter around the head before you choke, and the way it would _squeeze_ me, _fuck_ \--” 

Jesus motherfucking Christ and all the fucking Saints. Dean gasps, hips surging forward into Sam’s hand and he comes like a shot, surprised by the force of it, spilling all over his brother’s hand, body writhing and shuddering in his brother’s embrace, grunting and grinding into Sam’s fist.

His come slicks the way, Sam jerking him even harder, faster, grinding desperately against Dean’s ass, and he’s shivering, cock sputtering out the last few drops of come when Sam’s teeth drive into his shoulder and his brother comes, grabbing Dean by the hip as he ruts against him, come warm and wet as it soaks through his pajamas into Dean’s skin.

Dean’s still shivering, cock jerking with aftershocks when Sam relaxes his hold, going limp against Dean, kiss pressed against the spot where he’d bitten Dean.

Dean lies there in shock for a moment, still processing everything that just happened, and he’s kind of, maybe, a little bit in awe. Fucking Christ, his little brother has a filthy mouth.

_And how about the way you loved every single thing he was saying with that filthy mouth? About tying you up and holding you down and fucking **your** mouth?_

One thing at a time, he thinks, forcing the thought away.

“Okay?” Sam breathes against his neck, and he sounds like Sam, like he’s actually concerned. Like maybe he’s worried about what’s going through Dean’s head right now, like he wasn’t talking about tying Dean up and taking what he wanted just a few minutes ago.

Was that okay, he wants to know. Dean can’t even admit to himself how much more than okay it was, how much he really isn’t okay at all. 

He doesn’t want to ask, but he can’t help it, he has to know.

“Would you… really…” That’s all he can get out.

Thankfully Sam seems to get it. “Only if you wanted.”

Dean isn’t sure if he does or not, and here’s another dilemma he didn’t have twenty-four hours ago, and fucking Christ what is _wrong_ with him? With _both_ of them? Dean presses his hands against his face and shakes his head.

Sam strokes a thumb against his hip, lips brushing the bite mark Dean knows he’s got on his right shoulder. 

“I’ll make breakfast,” Sam says, getting up from the bed.

Dean lies there for a few minutes after the door closes, hands still on his face as he tries to sort out what just happened and fails miserably.

The only thing that gets him out of bed is how much he needs a drink.

 

*

 

He showers first, quick and efficient, in and out before he can think too much about scrubbing certain parts of himself. After he gets dressed, he goes downstairs carefully, walking near the edges of the stairs so they don’t creak, peeking his head down to look before he continues. He can’t go anywhere near the kitchen, despite the smell of bacon drifting through the house, grateful that Castiel seems to have joined Sam in the kitchen for his cooking session and the living room is empty. He walks past the settee, ignoring it in his quest for the bottle of whiskey he’d left on the desk the other day. He’s barely got his hand around the neck when Castiel yells out his name.

He spins, nearly dropping the bottle and sees Castiel standing just outside the doorway to the kitchen, his face smudged with flour.

“We’re making pancakes,” Castiel tells him, grinning like this is the most exciting event to happen in the history of all time. 

Dean stares at him, wide-eyed. “Great. That’s…um… great.”

“Chocolate chip,” Castiel adds, barely able to contain his glee.

Dean swallows hard and nods slowly. “Awesome.”

Castiel does what can only be described as a shimmy and disappears back into the kitchen.

Dean blinks and thinks distantly that he really should have nipped Cas’s “Dancing with the Stars” obsession in the bud.

Right, because that’s what’s important the morning after Cas watched you practically fuck your little brother on your motherfucking settee. On the very same morning you woke up with your little brother in your bed and let him hold you still while he jerked you off.

Dean puts the bottle to his lips and tilts it straight up, throat working through a couple of gulps. The world goes softer, fuzzier—pretty quick since his stomach’s empty—and he feels just the tiniest bit more able to deal. Not that anything makes any more sense.

Him and Sam… they… and then… again… and… Sam’s clearly okay with it, Castiel doesn’t seem to give a fuck (or possibly his brain is orbiting Mars), and all their neighbors think they’re fucking anyway. Great. So Dean’s the only one with the problem, here.

How is he the only one that gets that this can’t lead anywhere good? Unless there’s some kind of get rich quick game-show with a category for this. _I’ll take “‘Fucking My Brother’ for two-hundred, Alex.”_

Hell, he probably couldn’t even win at that, since there’s been no actual fucking, yet, and seriously what the hell, because that is so not the point here.

Wait, did he just think ‘yet’?

Dean eyes the bottle in his hand and thinks there’s not enough alcohol in the world.

 

*

 

Castiel presents him with a plate a few minutes later, bacon perfect, crispy in places, bubbling with nearly raw fat in others, greasy all over. There are scrambled eggs, too, slightly burned hash browns and chocolate chip pancakes that look only a little bit runny in the center. 

All of his breakfast favorites on a single plate, and he isn’t sure if this is Sam’s way of saying he’s all good or his way of trying to make it up to Dean. Maybe both. And Dean can’t seem pick a lane either—though his lanes are more like guilt and more guilt—but he kind of gets it and really, _really_ wishes he didn’t. 

Sam comes out of the kitchen, plate in hand, and he looks… he looks like… he’s okay.

Sam thinks he wants this, and maybe he thinks Dean is coming around, wanting it, too. Hell, maybe Sam’s actually even a little happy.

That just makes Dean feel even worse. Because if he’s what Sam’s hanging his happiness on…

Why would Sam do that? Why does Sam want this?

Dean takes his plate and sits on the end of the couch, because the only other thing he can do is try to escape to Esmerelda’s, or Sunny’s, and really, does he think they’ll do anything but send him right back here? And why not? They think what’s going on between him and Sam is perfectly okay.

Castiel doesn’t sit between them, perches on the other end with his plate on his lap, remote in one hand, fork in the other, and Sam falls into the space between, plate on his knees, laptop powering up on the coffee table, and it all… feels so normal. Except for the way Castiel isn’t sitting between them, the way that Sam is looking at college courses while some nature documentary drones on in the background, like this morning never happened.

Dean focuses on his bacon, and it’s good. It’s really fucking good, and he has to suppress a noise or two of joy while he eats everything on his plate, because despite everything that happened last night and this morning, this is the best breakfast he’s had in a long time. 

After, he’s way too conscious of Sam’s body next to him, the flex of his thigh against Dean’s as he leans forward, typing something into the keyboard. Maybe Dean should leave, go downstairs or out to the garage or something, because sitting here is starting to feel slightly uncomfortable. Not that Sam’s acting weird. Sam’s acting so anti-weird that it’s, well, _weird_. 

But every time he moves, all Dean can think about is his brother’s arm wrapped around his waist, one hand locked around his wrist, the other fisting his cock. About all the things Sam said he wanted to do. About how it’s kind of turning him on no matter what his brain is trying to tell him. 

God. What is wrong with him? And why isn’t anyone else acting like something’s wrong with him?

The doorbell rings and Dean’s grateful for the interruption, starts to get up to go answer it. But Castiel is faster, jumping up from the couch and racing to the door.

Leaving Sam and Dean alone together. 

Awesome.

“You okay?” Sam asks after a few seconds. 

He’s not looking at Dean, still focused on his laptop. Dean thinks about the question for a moment, considers the way he’s re-imagining everything they did in this very spot last night, the way he’s chewing on his lower lip, knee shaking up and down so fast his leg’s almost vibrating, and decides he’s very much not okay.

“Great,” he nods.

“Dean…” Sam’s still not looking at him, but he can tell by Sam’s tone that he’s about to say something that’s going to break the denial bubble they’re currently existing in.

“I should go see who’s at the door,” Dean says, about to get up.

Sam touches him, looking at him now, fingers resting across his shoulder right where Sam bit him this morning, and Dean feels frozen by even that light touch. “I want you to know… what I said earlier… that was just… talking.”

Dean can’t decide what bothers him more; the fact that Sam’s actually having this conversation with him, or the fact that there’s the tiniest part of him that feels a little disappointed by what Sam’s saying. 

Okay, wait, no, _both_. 

Definitely _both_ and what the fucking fuck, he really needs to go see who’s at the door.

He doesn’t get the chance though, because Castiel chooses exactly that moment to return to the living room. With an infant snuggled against his chest and a toddler holding his other hand.

Sam’s hand falls away from him and for a moment, they both just stare.

“Cas,” Dean says. “Why are there kids?”

Castiel fairly beams at him. “Jeanette had an emergency. She asked me to watch Ricky and Robby.”

Dean sinks his teeth into his lower lip, nodding slowly. “Awesome.”

He gets up from the couch, saluting Sam with his bottle. “I need to work on the car.”

Sam cuts him a look that tells him exactly how much of an asshole he is, and Dean decides that in the greater scheme of things, this is really the lesser of two evils.

 

 

The garage is _hot_ , and Dean unlatches the lock, throwing the door up into the ceiling to get some airflow.

He’s buried in his baby up to the elbows, trying to figure out where the discordant rumbling inside her is coming from when someone walks up behind him. 

He spins around, ready to hit whoever it is if he has to. Even if most of him knows he’s probably okay, old instincts die hard.

“Wow. Like a ninja,” Naf says, doing his funky chin nod. He holds up an unopened beer, offering it to Dean. Dean looks at it for a second, considers sending Naf away entirely, and then mentally shrugs, taking it and popping it open. Naf smiles and takes a sip from the open beer in his own hand.

“Are you even old enough to be drinking that?” Dean has to ask.

“By about ten years,” Naf grins, holding up his beer. “Better living through chemicals,” he adds, taking a long drink from the bottle.

Yeah. Okay. Whatever.

“She’s a beauty,” Naf says, nodding at the Impala, long locks of blond hair bobbing. “Sixty-seven, right? How long you had her?”

He doesn’t like Naf very much, but this scores him a couple of points. “Always. She was my dad’s before she was mine.”

“So she’s family.” Naf takes the last few steps up to the open hood, peering inside. “What’s wrong with her?”

Dean lets go of his annoyance, turning to the subject at hand. “Not sure. Nothing serious. Just a different hum to her sometimes.”

“So she really is family,” Naf nods, like he’s impressed. “They always warn you early. If you’re tuned in enough, they always tell you. You just _feel_ it.”

Yeah, it’s just like that. Dean’s always known when something was coming, when something was about to give out. Sometimes, he’s figured it out ahead of time, sometimes, like now, he can’t.

“Don’t know what it is this time,” he says, taking a drink from his beer.

“She’ll forgive you if you can’t figure it out right away. This car… she’s got good karma. That comes from the people who love her.”

“You can... feel her karma?” Dean asks, trying hard not to roll his eyes.

“Of course I can,” Naf grins, spreading his hands across the engine. 

“Listen,” he says, looking at Dean full on. “She’ll stay. She’ll run forever, long as you love her. Cars aren’t much different from people. Whatever you put into them, that’s what you get from them. Just like with people.”

Yeah. Just like with people, he thinks, taking another drink from his beer.

 

*

 

When he goes back inside the house, the sun has long since set, and he’s no closer to understanding what’s wrong with the Impala, or what he’s putting into other people, or what he hasn’t put into other people yet.

_Want you to fuck me._

Shut up.

The kids are clearly gone. Sam and Cas are watching some kind of cartoon movie, and Dean walks past them, slips off to his room. He hasn’t been drinking nearly as much as he’s wanted to today, mostly because he was worried about slipping and falling on top of his brother again. 

He sits down on the bed and tries to distract himself by looking through the National Geographic magazines he’s begun to accumulate, but his mind keeps wandering.

Dean’s been handcuffed by women a few times—though only with the condition that he gets to hold the key after that time with the waitress in Tampa. He went with it because they were into it, and he’d never really gotten off on it so much as he’d gotten off on how _they_ got off on it. He’d let Cassie tie him up once, when they were drunk and messing around, and that time had been pretty hot, but then, everything had been hot with Cassie. He still hadn’t gotten off on it so much as he’d gotten off on how she’d enjoyed it.

So why the sudden fucking hard on for the idea of being tied up by his brother, for fuck’s sake?

There is so much wrong with that thought that Dean can’t even begin to break it down. Not to mention that his mental hard on is quickly becoming literal. He’s been feeling guilty and half-turned on every single moment he’s spent near Sam today because he can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe if he just gets off he can have some peace for a few hours.

He’s got a couple of magazines stashed away that he brought with the rest of his possessions when they moved in here, but he doesn’t bother going for them, unzipping his jeans, hands slipping inside his underwear. 

His dick is almost completely hard now that he’s decided to pay attention to it, and when he wraps his fingers around it, it twitches with a jolt of pleasure. He lies back on the bed and pulls his dick out through open vee of his jeans, yanking up the hem of his t-shirt with his other hand so he won’t come all over it, and then he strokes himself, rough and quick, hoping to hurry up and get through this without—

“Dean?” Sam’s voice outside the door, and it makes him jump, startled, and then his cock twitches again as he registers Sam’s voice.

Jesus. Dean sits up, hurriedly pushing his dick back inside his pants and zipping up. 

“Yeah just a sec,” he answers, wishing he could get his dick to go soft. But it doesn’t, and so he goes and answers the door and hopes he can pass for looking like he hadn’t just been jerking off.

“Hey,” Sam says when he sees Dean. “I know things are… kind of weird right now, but I was thinking…” Sam trails off, his eyes caught below Dean’s waist, and Dean silently curses his dick for the way it jerks, sending another jolt of pleasure through him. Whatever Sam had been about to say apparently gets put on hold, because the way Sam’s looking at him now says talking’s the last thing he’s got on his mind.

“Can I come in?” Sam asks, and his voice has gone deeper, huskier.

Dean wants to shut the door, he knows he really fucking _should_ shut the door, but he doesn’t. He can’t answer Sam, either, torn between the want in his gut and guilt in his head.

Sam steps closer, body almost right up against him, and whispers in Dean’s ear. “I could make you.” Sam’s hand runs over Dean’s dick through his jeans and Dean shivers, eyes closing. “Hold you down like I did this morning. Is that what you want?”

God, that’s exactly what Dean wants, wants it so bad that he feels like he’s going to break in two. 

“I can make it so easy for you, Dean,” Sam whispers, lips brushing against Dean’s ear, fingers snaking around one of Dean’s wrists. “Take away all your choices. Tie you down, fuck you and make you come…” Dean groans, cock aching hard with just the thought, and Sam’s fingers tighten around Dean’s wrist, brother breathing out hot against Dean’s ear. “God, Dean, I’d make you come so hard… and there’d be _nothing_ you could do about it. Couldn’t stop me, even if you wanted to.”

Jesus Christ. The words undo Dean, hitting him hard as a punch, cock oozing pre-come, hand grabbing Sam’s head, moaning into his brother’s mouth as he thrusts his hips against Sam’s hand.

Sam’s hand cinches around Dean’s wrist, body slamming through the doorway into Dean, shoving Dean backwards, brother’s mouth devouring his. Dean hears the door slam shut, thinks Sam must’ve kicked closed behind them, and then he can’t think at all, because Sam’s on top of him, weight of him pinning Dean to the bed as he kisses down into Dean’s mouth, licking the inside slowly and thoroughly, hands holding both of Dean’s wrists over his head. Sam kisses him until his lips feel bruised with it, and then licks and bites and sucks his way down Dean’s throat, letting go of Dean long enough to rip Dean’s shirt over his head.

The fingers of one of Sam’s hands curl to hold Dean’s wrists as he slides the other down between them, working at Dean’s belt until he slides it free, and then he’s looping it around Dean’s wrists, bringing the pointed end through the middle, and Dean feels something in his belly turn over and kick, cock pulsing out another strand of pre-come. Sam’s fastening the buckle around the iron bars of the headboard and then he’s done, and Jesus, Dean’s hands are tied down over his head and there’s no key, no way out.

This is real, this is really happening. There’s a split second where he almost wants to take it all back, and then Sam’s teeth close around one of his nipples and he forgets all about it, hips arching up against his brother’s weight holding his lower body down, wrists tugging at the leather wrapped around them.

Sam teases, sucking and tugging at his nipple until Dean feels like he’s going to die, so turned on he can’t stand it, thrashing inside his skin, hips bucking against his brother’s belly.

“So hot, Dean,” Sam breathes, finally relenting, tongue swirling away from Dean’s nipple, mouth kissing lower. “Can’t wait…” tongue licking against Dean’s skin, “to…” teeth biting down against Dean’s stomach muscles, “fuck you…” wicked mouth sucking against the thin skin inside Dean’s hip. Dean jerks against the bed, cock straining inside his clothes, and God, he’s so close to breaking, begging for what he couldn’t even ask for before.

Sam undoes Dean’s zipper slowly, breathing words into Dean’s skin as he pulls Dean’s jeans down around his hips. “Can’t wait to feel the way you’re gonna clamp down on my cock when I make you come.” 

Jesus fucking Christ. 

Sam’s cheek brushes against the exposed length of Dean’s cock, and Dean’s whole body jolts, shaking the bed, his brother breathing out hard, mouth so close to where Dean wants it. And he wants it, God, he _really_ wants it, and he doesn’t even care how fucked up he is, can’t care past the heat knotting in his stomach, the hardness of his leaking cock.

Sam strips his jeans and underwear down his legs until they’re gone, peeling off Dean’s socks, and then he sits up on his knees, hands reaching for his belt. He undoes the buckle while Dean watches, slides it out through the loops, and then he wraps it around Dean’s right ankle, pulling the length and cinching it tight through the buckle around the iron bars at the end of the bed. He leans down, hands closing around Dean’s ass, angling Dean’s hips to the side before he pushes up Dean’s free leg, head lowering between Dean’s legs, breathing out hot against the head of Dean’s cock.

“So hard,” Sam whispers, tongue flickering out, licking across the slit. “Hard for me.”

Dean yanks against his bondage, trying to push his hips against his brother’s mouth, but Sam tied him too tight and he can’t, free leg digging a heel into Sam’s back. Sam grabs him around the ankle, shoves Dean’s leg back up where it was, hand splaying across the inside of his knee and throwing it against the bed, thumb hooking behind, spreading Dean open.

And there he is, spread open wide for his little brother, completely helpless and hard as a rock. Sam can do anything he wants and Dean couldn’t stop him, even if he wanted to, and he doesn’t. Fuck, he doesn’t. He knows how wrong it is, still can’t bring himself to care. Tries to grind into the feel of Sam’s tongue licking up the center vein of his cock, Sam’s free hand sliding up underneath Dean’s ass, grabbing hard, fingertips sinking into the muscle.

“God, your ass, Dean. So hot. Wanna watch my cock slide in and out of you.”

Sam’s lips against the head of his cock, whispering out those words with so much need and Dean wants it, too, wants to feel it while Sam watches. Sam rubs his fingers against the pre-come slicking Dean’s cock, and Dean gasps, hips bucking, listening as Sam sucks his fingers, tips touching Dean, after. Spit-slick, Sam pushes a finger inside him, burning, sweet sting and pleasure, Sam licking the head of his cock. And God, his brother’s finger inside him, his brother’s mouth closing around his cock and _sucking_.

Sam crooks his finger, brushing against something inside Dean that makes him stiffen and groan, so close to coming right then and there. Second finger sliding inside Dean, mouth backing away from Dean’s dick, fingers crooking and bending, making Dean crazy with how good it feels. By the time he pushes in a third finger Dean is senseless, incoherent and so fucking _full_.

“Gonna fuck you without a condom,” Sam promises, fingertips pressing up into the spot that makes Dean feel like he can come even without Sam’s mouth against his cock. “Wanna feel my come fill your hot ass.”

“Fucking Christ, Sam,” Dean hisses, hips stuttering against the air, cock jerking against his belly. Fuck, just the thought of Sam fucking him, coming inside him. 

“You ever fucked anyone bare, Dean?” Sam asks, fingers stroking inside Dean. 

Dean feels like he can barely breathe, barely think, but he manages to answer. “No.” Dean hasn’t, not ever, doesn’t even know what it feels like.

“Me neither,” Sam breathes. “You’re gonna be my first.”

Dean’s stomach flips over and Sam’s fingers slide out of him, leaving him completely untouched for an instant, and then Sam gets up on his knees, strips out of his clothes while Dean watches. He reaches for Dean’s dick again, palming against the pre-come there, and then he spits into his palm and fists his own cock. And then he’s there, crawling on top of Dean, one hand holding Dean’s free leg up and open, chest settling against Dean’s, cock nudging up between Dean’s legs. 

Sam puts his other hand on Dean’s face, kissing him, and he can feel the way his brother is trembling, nerves thrumming underneath his skin. Dean feels the tiniest sliver of fear for a second, but it’s nothing compared to how worked up he is. He thinks of how he couldn’t stop Sam now anyway, tied helpless to the bed and spread open for his brother—and then Sam is pushing inside him, stretching him open wide. 

“Fuck,” Dean groans, head tipping back against the pillows. It hurts but it feels good, too, and fuck, if he’d thought he’d felt full before, it’s nothing compared to this, Sam sinking inside him one slow inch at a time until the sting starts to fade, head of Sam’s cock nudging against that spot inside him, making his hips jolt, leaving him moaning.

“Christ, Dean,” Sam hisses, forehead crashing against Dean’s. “God, feel so fucking good. So hot, tied down and held open for me.” Sam’s whole body is shaking as he pushes the rest of the way inside Dean. He holds there for a moment, and Dean realizes he’s shaking, too, sweating and needing, and fuck, he _needs_ Sam to move.

Sam changes the angle of his body, chest pulling away from Dean’s , neck craning down as he starts to move, and Dean knows he’s watching his cock sliding in and out of Dean, and fuck, it’s hot, almost as wrong and good as Sam fucking him, twisting his hips and sending fireworks all through Dean.

“Should see it, Dean,” Sam grunts, thrusting into Dean quick and deep, shoving all the breath from Dean’s lungs, “your hole all pretty and pink, stretched so wide, taking my cock.”

God, fuck, Dean _can_ see it in his head, hear how hard Sam’s getting off on seeing it, and it’s insanely stupidly beyond hot, because it’s so _wrong_ , but Jesus Christ it feels so motherfucking good, Sam angling to nudge against that spot inside Dean with every thrust, muscles straining against the belts holding him down, his cock leaking against his belly, begging to be touched.

“So hot and tight,” Sam growls, “muscles squeezing me. Wanna keep my cock inside you, fuck you for hours, but I really wanna feel you come on it. Feel you _squeeze_ and flutter while I watch your face.”

Sam leans back down, pressing his chest to Dean’s, rocking his hips at an angle that makes Dean’s eyes roll back in his head with pleasure.

“I really…” Sam whispers, mouth painting the words against Dean’s chin, dragging his hips backward, “really…” slamming deep inside Dean, making Dean gasp and writhe, “want to watch you come with my cock inside you, Dean.”

Dean really, really wants that too, so much that he feels like he’s going bust right out of skin, and Jesus fucking Christ, the words coming out of his brother’s mouth. Dean’s spine tries to arch into the way Sam’s fucking him, but he’s tied too tight, and goddammit, he’s so hard, so ready to come, and Sam just keeps fucking him, that wicked voice whispering out against his mouth.

“Gonna make you come so hard…” Sam tells him, fingers brushing against the hot, taut skin of Dean’s dick, “and you’re gonna squeeze me so fucking tight that I’m gonna come, too. Gonna fill you full of come,” he promises, fingers closing around Dean’s cock, loosely teasing as he fucks Dean within an inch of his sanity. “And when I’m done, I’m gonna hold you open, watch it trickle out of your fucked out ass and lick it clean.”

“Fuck, Sam,” Dean groans, stretching, straining, completely wrecked, “Jesus fucking _Christ_.”

“Yeah, do it,” Sam breathes into Dean’s mouth, hand tightening around Dean’s dick, stroking him quick and hard, hips driving up into Dean, and fuck, oh God, fuck. 

“Yeah, come on,” Sam growls low and dirty, “come for me, Dean. Come on my cock.”

The words slam into Dean’s brain with the feel of Sam’s thumb hitting the bundle of nerves underneath the crown of his dick, his brother’s cock hitting that perfect spot inside him, and Dean shoves his head back into the pillows, whole body seizing as he comes. Comes so motherfucking hard that his hands yank against his restraints so hard that he’ll have bruises tomorrow, can’t feel it now, can’t feel anything except his dick spilling all over his belly, Sam’s hand wrapped around him, Sam’s cock inside him, riding that spot, and fuck, fuck, fuck.

Body shuddering and seizing around Sam, his brother’s hand losing its rhythm as he comes, too, wet hotness filling Dean’s ass, and Sam’s coming inside him, bare and—

Dean jerks against his bondage once, and then he’s gone, caught in the last throes of coming, Sam pulsing inside him, thrusting and shoving, mouth spilling out a stream of words Dean can barely understand.

When he’s done, still shivering and contracting with aftershocks against the bed, Sam pulls out, as good as his word as he spreads Dean open, tongue sliding up between Dean’s legs, and Dean’s cock jerks, pushing out a last burst of come against his belly.

Another aftershock racks him as Sam slides up his body, kisses Dean’s mouth with the taste of Sam’s come, and it’s so wrong, so fucked up, but Dean can’t help the sound that comes out of him as he sucks on Sam’s tongue.

Sam finally pulls back, looking at Dean, sweating and wrecked. “Motherfucking… Jesus Christ, Dean.”

And well, _yeah_.

Sam’s hands are already moving, undoing the belt at his wrists, and then the one at his ankle, and then Sam’s sliding up beside him, body wet with sweat as he fits himself against Dean. 

Dean waits until he can breathe mostly normally, and then lets his head loll to the side, looking at Sam. He doesn’t want to ask, but he has to know. “Where the fuck did you learn to talk like that?”

Sam looks at him for a moment, and then tilts his head, shrugging. “It just… sort of happens. I only did it a few times, before. Now… since… it’s like I can’t shut up.”

Dean gives him a skeptical look, one of his eyes narrowing, brow rising above the other.

Sam looks down, gaze skirting down across the bed. “You seemed like you… Is it… I mean was it… weird?”

Sam looks… uncertain, and maybe a little bit embarrassed, and Dean realizes that he wasn’t kidding. This isn’t something Sam’s practiced, and definitely not something he does all the time. 

Which makes it even fucking hotter and even more wrong, Christ.

“It wasn’t weird. I…”

And well, how do you tell your little brother you think he could put the whole phone sex industry out of business?

And how about how weird this whole fucking situation is? How about that, Dean?

“So you… liked it?” Sam asks, looking at him again.

Dean isn’t sure like is a strong enough word. And he doesn’t want to answer Sam, but he opened this fucking can of worms, and Sam’s looking at him for reinforcement, and if he doesn’t want Sam to feel bad about it—more importantly, if he doesn’t want Sam to stop doing it—he needs to tell the truth.

God he is so fucked up.

“Yeah,” he mutters quickly, nodding as he looks down at the bed.

“If you don’t want me to…” Sam starts to say, not sounding convinced.

“It makes me fucking crazy, okay?” The words come out of Dean’s mouth without thinking, completely honest, just wanting to put this conversation to rest.

Fuck. He really just said that. 

“Can we stop talking about this, now?” he adds, still not able to look at Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam says after a moment, nodding. “Yeah, okay.”

Sam half sits up, leans across him and turns off the lamp on the nightstand, and Dean doesn’t really know where he expected things to go from here, hadn’t even really thought about it. Sam’s arm thrown across his chest, tugging him in by the shoulder, one thigh stretched across both of Dean’s legs, and fuck he’s a clingy motherfucker.

It should bother Dean more; his brother sprawled out half across him, both of them naked as the day they were born, totally and completely fucked out. Dean knows it _should_ bother him more, should make him want to curl up in a corner, but it doesn’t, and that bothers him even more.

It bothers him so much that he falls asleep in the middle of thinking about it. He sleeps peaceful and dreamless, body eventually turning on its side, pushing inside the half circle of Sam’s arm and leg thrown across him.

 

 

It’s when he wakes up in the morning that it finally sinks in. He wakes up in an empty bed to soreness in his wrists, sees the bruises beginning to build beneath the skin there, and suddenly it all hits him like a ton of bricks. Everything they’d done—God, everything he’d let Sam do to him—last night. He’d… and Sam had… and they’d…and there were belts and for fuck’s sake the things Sam had _said_. 

Maybe he’d had more to drink than he’d thought. Or maybe he’d had just enough.

_Or maybe you just wanted it that bad._

The worst part is, he can’t even argue with whatever part of him just said that, because last night… 

He’s never even thought about being with another guy—well, okay, but not very seriously. Okay, maybe he’s thought about it a couple of times goddammit, but still. And he’s never let anybody tie him up like _that_ before and so he’d… let _Sam_?

And is he wondering, just the tiniest bit, why Sam isn’t still here in bed with him right now? He thinks maybe he is.

Jesus. He sighs and sits up on the bed, feet touching the hardwood floor as he rubs his hands across his face.

What the fuck is he going to do about this? 

 

*

 

He takes his time showering, thinks about how he needs to wash his sheets today, too.

What the fuck he’s going to do about this apparently consists of drying off, getting dressed, taking a few long drinks from the bottle in his hand and walking downstairs like last night never happened, because what the hell else can he do, really?

He smells flour as he hits the bottom of the stairs, scent so strong that it overwhelms everything else. He walks toward the kitchen, because there’s no one in the living room, and that’s where he can hear people moving, and talking and laughing.

The kitchen is a disaster, flour _everywhere_ , coating everything in a fine dust, strangeness of colored spatters shot through all of it. They’re clearly babysitting again. Robby is standing next to Cas, Sam sitting down, all of them gathered around the small table they keep in the kitchen, and it’s covered in lumps of colored dough.

“We made edible Play-doh,” Cas grins when he sees Dean, and his teeth are blue. “I learned to do it from TV.”

Of course he did.

“Where did you get food coloring?” Dean asks.

“From the--” Cas begins, but Dean stops him, finishes his sentence.

“Estate sale,” he nods.

Sam’s got one hand buried deep in homemade Play-doh, the other holding Ricky close to his chest, every inch of both of them coated in flour. 

“You were awake. You were supposed to be watching him,” Dean says, glaring at Sam.

“I got caught up.” Sam shrugs.

Robby doesn’t care a bit about Sam’s lapse, handing Dean a drippy Play-doh burger.

Dean takes a bite and falls into the seat next to Sam.

“This is all your fault,” he mutters, thinking how the Play-Doh doesn’t taste half bad.

Sam just tilts his head a little and smiles. “It’s fun.”

Dean sighs and gives up, gives in and starts building a yellow Play-Doh giraffe, trying not to be so aware of how close Sam is. It doesn’t really work, and his giraffe turns out lop-sided, its thin legs bending inward and slowly crumpling beneath its body weight. 

Dean doesn’t understand how these things actually walk around.

Castiel is building a mini-castle with Robby, busily sculpting the tiny, pointed roofs for the towers, point of his tongue sticking out one side of his mouth in concentration. Sam has long since cleaned up Ricky, set up one of the empty cardboard boxes they have in abundance and stuffed a pillow inside it, settling the baby on top to sleep. He’s nothing like the Sam without his soul was with a baby, gentle and careful now and… comfortable. Attentive, watching over Ricky even while he sculpts, thumbs pushing, long fingers molding the clay, not forcing it into any shapes, just kneading it, over and over again, and Dean’s sort of mesmerized by the motion of his brother’s hands, the way his knuckles roll and his fingers smooth, tips curling and pulling back again.

Dean’s halfway to imagining them on his skin when Ricky wakes up, crying.

Sam picks him up from his makeshift bed, settling him against his shoulder and holding him with both hands, whispering something to him.

He’d be a good dad. 

Dean’s never really thought about it before. Sam getting married, yeah, but he’s never once imagined Sam having kids, what he’d be like with them. He wonders if Sam’s imagined it. If Sam wants that.

_I’m still stuck on the part where we’re adopting kids_

Maybe Sam hasn’t, then. But he deserves it. He’d be good at it.

Sam cuts his eyes at Dean across the top of Ricky’s head, brows rising, silently asking ‘what?’

Dean hesitates for a second, and then he nods, looking deliberately at the baby against Sam’s chest, his own brows rising before he looks back at Sam’s face.

Sam lifts a shoulder, look on his face saying yeah, maybe I’ve thought about it, sometimes.

Dean nods slowly, looking away—and then Sam’s fingers touch his shoulder, and Dean looks back at him, can barely stand to see the expression on Sam’s face.

Dean has to get up then, leave the room, because, _It’s not as important as this, Dean_ might as well have been tattooed across his forehead.

 

*

 

Dean spends most of the afternoon looking at job openings, not finding much that’s appealing. He’s starting to think he should just take anything for now until he finds something better—it’d be really good for him to get out of the house more. 

Dean doesn’t need a job for the money. He needs it for his _sanity_.

And technically, he does need it for the money.

 

 

Later, Dean sits down against the narrow bed in the basement, bottle in one hand, phone in the other. It’s been a couple weeks. He presses his thumb against the button that will dial Bobby’s number.

Bobby’s doing great, the house is finished and he and Jody are mostly moved in. They’ve even bought a puppy, a Rottweiler, and Bobby’s junkyard business is doing as well as it ever has. He sounds as happy as Dean’s ever heard him, and he can’t help smiling to hear it.

“I never thanked you,” Bobby says. “For bringing me back.”

“Didn’t need to,” Dean replies, voice gruff, shaking his head.

“Yeah. I do. Because if you hadn’t brought me back… I’d’ve never had this.”

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Dean says and means it.

“Now if I can just live long enough to see you the same.”

Of course Bobby knows he’s not happy. That’s why Dean called him, isn’t it? 

And for a second, it’s all right there on the verge of Dean’s lips, confessing everything—their crazy ‘normal’ life, him and Sam, all of it. But he can’t. Bobby can never know. Nobody who really knows them can ever know—well, besides Castiel—and everyone who doesn’t really know them thinks they’re already fucking.

“It was easier when we were on the road,” Dean says, instead. It’s as close to the truth as he can get, and truth, too, besides.

“You were out before, Dean. How’s this any different?” 

He wishes he could tell Bobby just how different it is. “It just… is. Sam… Cas… it’s all a lot more complicated.”

“That’s what happens when you live with family.”

Is he… “Lisa and Ben…” Dean starts to say, and then hesitates.

“I know you loved ‘em, Dean, but they weren’t family.” Bobby’s voice is kind, but still matter of fact.

Dean swallows hard, thinking about that. 

“I wanted you to be happy with them more than anybody. But even old as I am, I can still see what’s in front of me.”

Dean chews on his lower lip in silence, lets his eyes drop to look at the floor.

“You got Sam back. That’s all that was ever gonna make you happy. And now the monsters are gone.”

He sighs into the phone and runs a hand through his hair, and it’s all true, he knows it is, much as he wishes it wasn’t.

“The fight’s over, Dean,” Bobby tells him. “Let it go.”

His eyes flutter shut and he shakes his head. “Killing things was easier.”

“Easier than what?” Bobby demands, like Dean’s lost his mind. “You know how many hunters woulda given a limb to get rid of all the monsters? To get out and have a normal life? Yeah,” Bobby goes on, dismissive, “there’s the other kind that live for it, but that ain’t you. Never has been.”

“What if I don’t know how to be anything else?” he asks.

“Then learn,” Bobby answers, gruff but not unkind.

Dean wants to ask how, but he’s pretty sure Bobby couldn’t answer that question.

Dean thanks Bobby for the advice and they say goodbye. After, Dean sits there, thinking hard about what Bobby had said to him, no closer to answers than he was before.

Eventually, he pulls himself from the bed, bottle in hand, and makes his way upstairs, past Castiel watching the cooking channel, up the stairs to his room, and he’s almost glad Sam isn’t there on the fucking _settee_ to see him. Almost. 

Which is exactly why he needs to go to bed.

Sam’s there, sleeping in his bed when he opens the door, and he’d wonder how this is his life, except that it is now, maybe always has been.

Sam rolls over, arm thrown across his eyes to block the hallway light, and then he rolls over on his side, other arm lying across the bed like an invitation.

Dean takes another drink, tipping up the bottle, thinking how he should go somewhere else. And then he goes to his bed, sliding in underneath Sam’s arm in all his clothes, and Sam slides up behind him, fitting to him, closing around him. 

He shouldn’t be this lonely, shouldn’t need this so much, except that it’s Sam. It’s Sam, and it’s easy, so fucking easy, to fall asleep right here.

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

  


When Dean wakes, it’s because Sam’s fingers are tracing lines down his chest, across the muscles in his stomach, playing down the inside crease of his thigh inside his clothes, stroking everywhere but where Dean really wants him. He’s half-hard as he opens his eyes, cock going completely hard as he realizes what’s happening.

Sam rocks his hips against Dean’s ass, and Dean can feel how hard Sam is through his jeans.

Sam’s hands lock down around his wrists, and Dean relaxes, throwing his head back into the caress of Sam’s tongue.

“If you really like being held down…” Sam whispers, “tied up… I’m okay with it. I like it, too and I’ll give you what you want.” Sam’s tongue traces the curve of Dean’s ear, hips rocking into him again. “But… if it’s because you think this is wrong and that’s the only way you… can let it happen. I don’t… want it to be that way. Not forever.”

Dean turns his head deeper into the pillow, biting his lower lip. There’s more truth in Sam’s words than he wishes there were.

Tongue trailing down to Dean’s jaw, gliding down his throat and then back up again. “I want you to want this all the way. I want you to want to fuck me, too. God, I want you to fuck me.” 

The words hit Dean like a punch, want twisting in his belly. It would be so easy, to turn Sam over against the bed, give him exactly what he wants. And fuck, Dean _wants_ to. 

“Want it so bad, Dean…” words whispered against his ear, teeth closing around his earlobe, sending shivers down Dean’s spine, fingers working at the button on Dean’s jeans. Pulling them down past Dean’s hips along with his underwear.

It would be so easy to just lie here, let Sam do what he wants. But Sam wants him, and he wants to…

He turns over, breaking from Sam’s grip, throwing Sam against the bed, brother’s wrists pinned above their heads as Dean kisses him, kicks the rest of his way out of his jeans. 

Sam’s bare underneath him, and Dean moves down, tearing off his shirt and licking and sucking all the way down to where Sam’s legs spread apart for him, mouth gliding across the head of Sam’s cock.

Sam leans, reaching with his upper body for the nightstand, and Dean isn’t sure how much it’s supposed to turn him on that his brother is handing him a bottle of lube to open him up with, but it definitely turns him on a whole fucking _lot_. 

“You’ve been thinking about this,” Dean says, tongue darting out to taste the tip of his brother’s cock. “Planning for it.”

Sam twitches at the sound of his voice, like he’s surprised, and then bucks into the feel of Dean’s tongue against him, and Dean puts a hand on his stomach, holding him down.

“Were you waiting for this, Sam?” Dean asks, words spoken a millimeter from the head of Sam’s cock, and he can feel his brother vibrate with the sensation of his breath, his mouth, so close.

“Yes,” Sam bites off the word, and Dean rewards him with another swirl of his tongue. “Should’ve… gotten lube… earlier… wish I’d had it for you, but I… ungh,” Sam grunts with the flicker of Dean’s tongue against his slit, pearly beads of pre-come welling on the tip. “Didn’t think about it until yesterday.” The final words leave Sam in a rush of confession, hips straining toward Dean’s mouth.

Dean could care less about when Sam thought about buying lube, everything in him caught up in Sam saying he’s been waiting for this.

Dean flips open the lid on the lube with a thumbnail, turning it with a twist of fingers, squeezing it until it drips down his palm, forefinger and middle finger running through the slick mess until they’re soaking wet, almost groaning as he thinks about what he’s going to do with them. “You want me inside you, Sam?”

“God, yes. Fuck. Your _voice_ , Dean.” It’s all Sam can manage, strangling on the words.

Sam’s got a thing for his voice? Dean guesses he shouldn’t be surprised, as much as Sam talks while they’re fucking, the way it makes Dean crazy. 

He settles two slick fingers against his brother’s hole, tracing the rim, and then nudges one inside, just the very tip.

Sam cries out, rises up off the bed, taking Dean to the second knuckle in one slide, and it’s so fucking hot that Dean’s cock twitches out a burst of pre-come before he presses down against Sam’s stomach, holding him still.

“No patience,” Dean chides, running his tongue down the length of Sam’s cock, feeling his brother shake and tremble before he arches his finger, pushes it deeper inside.

“Fuck, Dean,” Sam gasps, shoving against him.

“Keep it up and _I_ might have to tie _you_ down.”

Sam settles against the bed, and then he asks, voice hitching, “Would you?”

Dean would, right now he would. He slides up Sam’s body, finger still deep inside his brother as he bites at Sam’s lower lip. “Do I need to?”

“Another time… wanna touch you, Dean. Feel you.” Sam’s tongue slides inside his mouth, sweeping across Dean’s, letting go of the headboard, arms closing around Dean’s body, before they slide, palming against the musculature of Dean’s back. 

Dean bites at Sam’s throat, licks his way down his brother’s body, tongue flickering across his brother’s chest, his stomach, feels the tips of Sam’s fingers clench against his shoulders as he settles between his brother’s legs. Licking the head of his brother’s cock as he pushes his middle finger inside him. Sam takes it, barely bucking against the feel, and Dean can’t even believe it. Because, fuck, he’s got two fingers buried inside his little brother’s ass all the way to the third knuckle, rim glistening and pink, stretched around him, taking him, so fucking _easy_ , hips rocking up like he wants more of Dean inside him.

“Want more, Sam?” Dean’s voice grates like gravel across the words, so fucking turned on he doesn’t even know where they’re coming from. “Taking my fingers so easy,” he says, licking at the base of Sam’s dick, “bet you’ll take my cock even easier.”

Sam sucks in a breath, his body pulling taut as a guitar string for a moment, and then his hips _shove_ against Dean’s hand.

“Fuck yes I will,” Sam groans, shuddering and then bucking against the bed as Dean reaches with his fingertips, brushes against that spot inside Sam.

“God, wanna see you stretched open like this around my cock.”

“Fuck. Dean,” Sam moans, writhing on his fingers, veins in his forearms standing out fists clenched around the iron bars of the headboard. “Do it,” he begs. “Jesus Christ, fucking do it.” 

Dean pulls his fingers out of Sam, licks his way up Sam’s cock on his way to Sam’s mouth. He pushes Sam’s legs up, gets his hands on each of Sam’s knees and spreads Sam wide open, sliding up between, groaning as he feels the heat of Sam’s hole nudge against him.

It’s a long enough moment for Dean to really see Sam underneath him, to understand what they’re doing, and how this is… fuck, this is _Sam_. Looking at him like this, Dean knows it’s not because Sam’s his brother, as much as he wishes he could believe that. It’s because this is Sam, and Dean can’t screw things up between them, no matter how bad he wants this. 

“Sam…” It’s the only word he’s got, and he can see in Sam’s eyes that Sam can see everything he wants to say, all the words stuck in his throat. Brother’s heartbeat unsteady against his, body solid underneath him, Dean’s own heart pounding with want and fear and something he can’t look directly in the face even now.

“Shh,” Sam whispers, putting his hand on the back of Dean’s head and drawing him close, lips brushing Dean’s. “It’s okay, Dean. It’s okay.” Sam kisses him, hips pushing up against Dean’s, and Dean feels him slide against the head of his dick, his brother’s hands holding him close, wanting him.

Dean takes a breath and pushes, feels Sam arch underneath him, the heat of his brother’s body closing tight around the head of his dick, and fuck it feels good, so good that he thinks he’s going to bite through his lip as he keeps pushing, Sam hissing and moaning against his mouth, hips rising eagerly to take him. Searing hot, so tight, squeezing around Dean’s cock until he thinks it might just kill him, burying himself all the way to the base.

He draws back, kicks up with his hips, aiming for the spot inside Sam that makes Dean crazy, and the way Sam reacts, muscles flexing around Dean, crying out Dean’s name almost makes him come right there. Inside his little brother, Sam’s hands gripping him, nails digging into his skin, wanting more. Dean gives it to him, dragging out to the edge before he thrusts back inside.

“Fuck me, Dean. God, fuck me.”

Dean does, hands pressed against his brother’s face, looking down at the want in his brother’s eyes until he can’t stand it anymore, eyes closing, hips moving, fucking him hard and fast. Hands sliding down to his brother’s hips, holding them while Dean angles his thrust, mouth driving into his brother’s. 

“Feel so fucking good inside me,” Sam’s voice is gritty, on the verge of breaking. Sam so hot and tight all around him, squeezing and clenching and _bare_. Writhing underneath him as Dean fucks him, hands gripping Dean’s ass , holding on tight.

“How long… Sam?” Dean growls, fucking into Sam even harder. “How long…” twisting his hips, grinding, “have you…” thrusting, biting along the line of his brother’s jaw, “been waiting…” tonguing his way up to his brother’s ear, whispering out, “for me to fuck you?”

“Years…” Sam gasps, breath hitching as Dean slams into him. “Forever… fuck.”

Dean stills, then, teasing Sam with tiny, shallow thrusts, watches his brother twist and beg, trying to move, get more of Dean inside him, and it’s so hot Dean can barely speak, voice deep and grating. “Did you jerk off thinking about it, Sam? Did you come imagining my cock inside you?”

“Yes,” Sam moans, word leaving him in a rush of breath, like he thinks the quicker he answers Dean the quicker Dean will start fucking him hard again. “God Dean, came with three fingers in my ass imagining it was you.” 

Sweet Christing _fuck_. Dean groans, cock twitching as he imagines it, and he thrusts into Sam quick and hard, falls against Sam and grabs him by the shoulders, driving into him hard.

“So hot, Sam,” Dean gasps, drilling into his brother, “so motherfucking hot, Jesus Christ.”

He thinks Sam might try to say something else, but Sam looks like he can barely even _think_ right now, the way Dean’s giving it to him, holding Sam still as he slams into him again and again. Dean isn’t going to last more than a few seconds at this pace, with that image in his head, one hand sliding between their bellies, closing around Sam’s cock and squeezing.

Sam comes instantly, spurting all over Dean, crying out, nails digging into the flesh of Dean’s ass, and oh God, oh motherfucking _God_ , the way he feels, clamping down around Dean’s cock so hard that Dean feels like his brain’s going to explode in the instant before he comes, Sam’s muscles contracting, milking him as he shudders and thrusts, grunting and grinding into his brother’s ass, coming so hard that the world grays out, everything narrowed to the feel of Sam clenching down around his cock.

Dean rides it out to the last wave, twitching and shivering with aftershocks, Sam clinging to him while he rides his own aftershocks, muscles occasionally fluttering around Dean and drawing out another burst of pleasure that makes Dean hiss. Finally they both go still, lying there sweating against each other, Dean’s face resting in the curve between his brother’s shoulder and neck, coming down.

“Holy fuck, Dean,” Sam breathes, arms still loosely wrapped around him and Dean nods in agreement, not even sure where the hell all that came from.

Maybe it’s just something Sam brings out in him, like Dean apparently brings out his brother’s filthy mouth. And that’s... not disturbing him as much as it should be as he dozes off right there on top of Sam.

 

 

When he wakes up a bit later, Sam’s already gone from the bed, and his bed is a wreck, and he can feel guilt creeping back in around the edges of his mind. He sighs and pulls himself from the bed, throws on some jeans and goes to the bathroom to take a shower.

A bit later, after he’s clean and dressed, he carries the bed sheets down to the basement and puts them in the washer, standing there for a while before he goes back upstairs. 

There’s a note on the white board in Sam’s handwriting that says he’s gone to the store, and Castiel is on the couch, watching the cooking channel. Dean makes coffee and then sits down beside him for a while, occasionally sipping from his spiked mug, not really paying much attention to what’s on the screen or anything else. He’s distantly aware of Castiel getting up and walking to the kitchen, and a bit later, a smell hits him, rousing him from his thoughts.

Something is burning—something electronic. He’s up on his feet in an instant, looking around, running for the kitchen—when Castiel walks by him with a bowl of popcorn that smells like frying circuits.

“Is your popcorn… burning?” Dean asks, carefully.

“No,” Castiel frowns, regarding him very seriously. “Why do you think it’s burning?”

“It… smells different.”

“Oh. I put berebere spice on it,” Castiel tells him cheerfully. “I saw it on TV. It’s very good.”

“Berebere spice?” Dean doesn’t even know what the fuck that is. “Where’d you get berebere spice?”

“In the kitchen,” Cas shrugs.

“Of course,” Dean agrees sarcastically, shrugging with him. This is the house of the estate sale that never stops giving, no matter how much you wish it would stop. “Why the hell not?”

“You want some?” Cas asks, holding out the bowl.

Dean takes another whiff of the bowl and jerks away. “Yeah. No thanks. It smells like a fried circuit board.”

Castiel frowns at his popcorn, thinking about that for a moment, and then the doorbell rings, and he appears to forget all about it in his excitement to get to the door.

Remembering the _last_ time he let Castiel answer the door, Dean follows behind him.

Sunny’s on the other side, wearing one hell of a cute sundress, the kind that clings in all the right places, her hair down around her face for once, lips glossy and pink as she smiles at Cas.

“Popcorn?” Castiel asks, holding out the bowl.

Sunny reaches in for a handful, pausing as her hand gets close to her mouth. “It smells like when my stereo melted.”

“It’s very good.”

She eyes him for a second and then shrugs and puts a single piece of popcorn into her mouth. 

“It _is_ really good,” she agrees, eating the rest of the popcorn in her hand.

Dean rolls his eyes and is just about to leave them to the wonders of their popcorn experience when Sunny finishes chewing, looks at Cas from underneath her lashes and says, “So I was wondering if…. Maybe you wanted to go to a movie tonight?”

“What movie?” Castiel asks, and Dean kind of wants to smack him in the back of the head.

Sunny mentions some chick flick that Dean would rather spend two hours in hell than see, one that he’s sure will make Castiel cry before the end. But he still can’t help smiling a little bit as Cas lights up and tells her how he’s seen the previews for that one and that he’d love to go.

That seems to make Sunny happy, and she leans in, gives Cas a quick kiss on the cheek and then gives him one of her brilliant smiles. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Castiel stands there, looking dazed as Sunny leaves. 

Dean walks up and closes the door for him. He turns, grinning as he looks at Cas. “You just got asked out on a date.”

Cas blinks rapidly, surprised. “Is that… I…”

He falls silent, entire face frowning.

Dean can almost smell Castiel thinking, and it smells a lot like popcorn with berebere spice.

 

 

Surprisingly, Castiel doesn’t have a complete breakdown, although he does have a couple of beers, which probably helps. When the doorbell rings at seven, Dean claps him on the shoulder and tells him to break a leg, which Castiel takes entirely literally, and Dean tries to explain. Finally the doorbell rings a second time and Dean tells him to just have a good time.

Castiel goes to the door to greet Sunny, and Dean figures Cas only looks a little bit worried.

“Our boy’s growing up,” he smiles, looking over at Sam across the couch. Sam glances up from his laptop, a small smile curving his own lips before he goes back to whatever he’s doing, and for a few minutes, everything between them feels almost normal.

Sam’s absorbed in his laptop, and Dean’s feeling pretty comfortable, so he slides over a little bit, squinting at the monitor, trying to see what Sam’s looking up, but he can’t make sense of it, even though he understands the search words.

“Are you looking at nursing courses?” Dean asks, leaning in to make sure he’s reading right.

“Nursing career, actually.”

Dean shakes his head, looking at Sam sideways. “You hate hospitals. We both do.”

“Everyone hates hospitals. Nobody’s there because they wanna be.”

“And you wanna be there _why_?”

“Someone has to. Everything we’ve seen… everything we’ve been through. I can handle the blood and trauma, the death.”

Yeah, they can both deal with all that pretty well. As long as it’s not each other that’s hurt or dying. Dean’s dealt with a lot of death in his time, and as much as it’s fucked with him, it never fucked with him like it did when Sam died. Mom, Dad, Bobby… Dean never made deals to bring them back. 

_the space between Sam’s separated spine against Dean’s hand, blood pouring out across his palm. Tell him it’s not so bad, that he’ll be fine, tell him all the things you want to believe and know will never be, because this is it, and you can only hold him and pretend, and he’s gone forever_

But it didn’t happen like that. Dean made that deal to bring Sam back, and he’d do it again.

_You’re soulmates_

_Fuck you, Cas._

Dean sucks in a breath, curls his lower lip beneath his teeth.

“Nurse? Seriously?” 

Sam lifts a shoulder, tilts his head to the side a little. “I wanted to be a lawyer so I could help people. I hunted so I could help people. I still want to help people, Dean.” 

Dean can see it pretty clearly in his head, and it actually makes a lot of sense, even if his first instinct is to razz Sam about going into a traditionally female field. Sam would be really good as a nurse. He’s got the perfect personality for it, and he’s definitely had a ton of non-professional training already. After hunting all these years, Sam could work trauma situations and never bat an eye and then turn around and genuinely comfort a patient while they died. He’s completely capable, and more than smart enough, too. He’s always known Sam was the one of the two of them that could do whatever he wanted with his life.

Dean lets his smartass remark slip away and nods. “You’d be good at it.”

Sam stops what he’s doing and looks at Dean, expression halfway between a frown and a look of surprise. “Really? That’s it? No comments about what a girl I am?”

Sam really does know him way too well. 

“No. You’d be good at it,” Dean nods, fingers sliding around the neck of his whiskey bottle. Sam _would_. Sam’s going to be a nurse and Cas is going on dates, and Dean… Dean’s never going to be good for much. Dean gets up then, heading for the kitchen more for the need to be somewhere else than any other reason.

Sam follows into the room behind him, and Dean sighs, turning to face him.

“Why are you talking about my nursing career like it’s your funeral?” he demands. “What is going on with you, Dean? Sometimes I feel like things are okay, and then sometimes I feel like I’m gonna wake up tomorrow and you’re gonna be gone forever.”

“Sam.” Dean’s tone is a warning, telling him to back off, but Sam’s never been particularly good at listening to that tone.

“You have to talk to me, Dean. The only way any of this is ever gonna work is if we talk to each other.”

“You think talking about it’s gonna fix anything?” Dean asks with a hollow laugh. 

“You think it’s gonna fix anything if we never do?” Sam asks, and Dean has to avert his eyes, look away.

“It’s not gonna fix a motherfucking thing even if I try, Sam.”

“Try anyway.”

He could turn and walk away, leave it like this. That might be better-- _would_ be better, except for how Dean can tell from the tone of Sam’s voice that they’re going to talk about this one way or another, eventually. And maybe… maybe he should just get this over with. Get it done.

“Okay,” Dean nods, gritting his teeth together. “Fine. You wanna know the truth...”

“I do.”

Dean takes a deep breath. He doesn’t want to do this, not ever, but Sam wants to know, and he owes his brother this much—hell he owes Sam a fuck of a lot more than just this, but he owes him at least this much.

Tongue flickering against his dry lips, and then he looks at his brother, lets the words go, lets them spill out, no matter how much they burn. 

“I don’t belong here, Sam.” That much, at least to Dean, seems clear. “There’s no apple pie life for me. I know you wanted that for me… I tried. And I fucked it up. Because all I ever wanted was to have you back, and the second I did, that life was _over_. I knew it, _Lisa_ knew it. She told me, ‘You two have the most unhealthy, tangled up, crazy thing that I've ever seen’. That I’m never gonna be happy as long as you’re around. And she was _right_ , Sam, because I can’t do this. I want you with me, I want to live our lives together… but not like this.” Dean shakes his head, looking away. “Not like this.”

“Why not like this, Dean? Doesn’t it make sense? You were out, out of hunting, you had the life, and all you could think about was getting me back? Don’t you think that’s a little, I don’t know,” Sam says, shrugging hard, “ _weird_?”

Dean takes a deep breath, grinding his teeth together.

“You quit hunting. You had a girlfriend, you had a kid who was like your son. You had a future. And you were willing to give all that up for what? Me?”

“Yes,” Dean fires back. “Because that’s what I _know_. You and me,” he says, pointing between them, “together, on the road, saving people, hunting things, stopping the apocalypse. It’s all I’ve ever done, Sam, since I was a kid. It’s all I’m good for.”

“It’s _not_ all you’re good for,” Sam tells him, and fucking Christ, he’s giving Dean that look, one that makes Dean want to squirm and run away. “Why do you think I wanted us to buy a house together? Why do you think I made sure we had different last names?”

“I didn’t want _this_.”

“Right.” Sam folds his lips together, brows drawing down as he nods. “You only wanted me back all that time so we could hunt monsters together. Yeah, Dean. Sure.”

_You got Sam back. That’s all that was ever gonna make you happy._

Dean shakes his head emphatically. “I never wanted this.”

“Dean--”

“You deserve better than this,” the words leave Dean before he knows he’s going to say them.

Sam startles, blinking at him for a moment before he tilts his head, looks at Dean in disbelief. “You think I haven’t thought about my options, Dean? I have. I did. I didn’t have to make a decision. There was no other answer.”

“You only think that because you don’t think you have any other options. Christ, Sam. I’m the _last_ thing you should want.” It’s the truth, and it hurts like motherfucker.

“Dean…” Sam shakes his head, looking at Dean like he can’t believe he’s having to say this. “You’re all I’ve wanted for years.”

Dean’s mouth works soundlessly for a moment and finally he closes it, shakes his head. “I honestly don’t know which one of us is more pathetic.”

He can see the way the words hit Sam, work right under Sam’s skin and send him from puppy dog to pissed-off in seconds. Sam’s on him a split second later, shoving him up against the kitchen counter.

”Doesn’t feel pathetic to me,” Sam growls, rocking his hips into Dean.

“Tell me you don’t want this Dean…” Sam whispers, hips grinding into him, mouth smearing hot and rough against his. “After the way you let me fuck you the other night… the way you loved it… the way you fucked me this morning.” Sam’s hands are locked around his face, and Dean feels like he can barely breathe, trapped between his brother and the counter, Sam’s voice low and dirty. 

Sam runs a hand down between them, down Dean’s belly, stroking over his cock through his jeans, and Jesus, Dean’s hard as a rock. 

“Tell me you don’t want me. Go ahead,” Sam breathes the words down into Dean’s mouth, tongue flashing out over Dean’s lower lip, fingers squeezing up the length of his cock, and Dean moans into Sam’s mouth. “Tell me you don’t want me and I’ll stop.”

Dean sucks in a breath, tries to find words, but they crumble underneath how good Sam feels against him.

“Four words, Dean…” brother’s teeth grazing his lower lip, “‘I don’t want you’…” Sam’s dick grinding into his own hand, fingers stroking Dean through denim, “that’s all you have to say…” other arm snaking around Dean’s waist to hold him tighter for Sam to grind against, “and I’ll walk away.”

“You could even shove me away… if you wanted… but you don’t. Do you?”

God, he really fucking doesn’t want to shove Sam away, he wants this, and it’s not news to him whenever Sam’s touching him, but this… it isn’t...

“You want me, Dean. We both know it,” Sam purrs into his ear. Sam’s hand slides down inside Dean’s pants, bare skin fitting around his dick, and Dean hisses, trying to push into the feel. “See,” Sam whispers, palm stroking hard up the curve of Dean’s dick, squeezing under the head.

So hot, fuck it’s so hot, and Dean never wants him to stop.

“Tell me you want me, Dean,” Sam’s voice is a wicked, sinful whisper, thumb playing at the leaking slit of Dean’s cock. “Tell me you want me… and I’ll get down on my knees right here and suck you off.”

Fuck. Dean groans, cock twitching, balls tightening, so close to coming just imagining it. He wants that really fucking bad. And he wants Sam like this, he knows that, deep down he’s known it for a long time now, it’s the rest of it he can’t do. The rest that comes with doing this.

“But even if you don’t tell me… we both know,” Sam whispers, hot breath into Dean’s ear. His hand stills around Dean’s cock, hips moving away from Dean’s, leaving space between them, and Dean’s overwhelmed by the sudden lack of friction, hips pumping up into Sam’s loose fist, hands gripping his brother for leverage.

“God, Sam,” he gasps, hitching in a breath, hands clutching his brother’s arms as he comes, spurting all over his brother’s fingers, the inside of his clothes, Sam practically holding him up against the counter, Dean’s knees going weak. When he’s done twisting and writhing against his brother, Sam lets go of him, making sure he’s steady against the sink and then…

Sam lifts his dripping hand to his mouth and licks come from the back of it, eyes burning into Dean the whole time. He doesn’t say a word, just stares at Dean, and everything in his expression says, “Tell me you didn’t want that.”

And fuck… how can anything be so hot and make his heart hurt like this at the same time?

Dean drops his eyes, breathing out hard. “I want you,” he says quietly. “But the rest of this…the house… this life…” Dean trails off shaking his head. “I don’t want me for you.”

There’s a hesitation while Sam takes that in, and then he moves toward Dean, and Dean knows what he’s going to say, can’t stand to hear it. He jerks away from Sam’s touch.

“You don’t get to decide _for_ me, Dean,” Sam says, raising his voice again.

“This time I do.”

He can see the way Sam jerks his whole body angrily, hands clenching into fists, can imagine the lines in his brother’s face tightening, jaw clenching and unclenching again and again. And then Sam turns, storming from the kitchen. Dean hears the door to the garage slam in the dining room, and then he’s alone.

 

 

Sam’s been gone for hours and Dean’s had so much to drink that he’s nearing the point where he’s going to have to close one eye to focus on the TV clearly. And still he can’t stop thinking.

He wants Sam. And he really, really shouldn’t. Because he isn’t what Sam needs, this isn’t what they should have. But Sam wants it, too--Jesus, Sam’s done things to him that Dean would never let anybody else even _try_. And he doesn’t know why he’d ever be okay with that, except that… except that…

He trusts Sam. He trusts Sam and that makes everything so much easier than it would be if it were anyone else. And it’s still tearing him up inside, because… Sam’s his brother, and he deserves better than this. Better than Dean. Better than living with his brother, fucking his brother for the rest of his life.

They spent so many years on the road _not_ doing this. How can they be doing it now?

Maybe all those years, with the grief and cases between them, they’d been able to ignore it, but now…

Now there’s nothing else.

It’s all God’s fault, Dean decides, folding his arms across his chest. If they were still on the road, hunting monsters, this never would have had a chance to happen. Asshole motherfucker. And no, by the way, Dean never wished for all the monsters to be gone, not even when he was with Lisa, so where the fuck did God get off, telling him he was doing Dean a favor by taking them all away?

Maybe God just wants him to suffer. He wouldn’t put it past the fucker. He wishes he could send God a postcard like the one God sent him. Closes his eyes and sends up a mental one.

_Fuck you, you asshole. Fuck you for taking all the monsters away, for giving me this life. It really fucking **sucks** by the way. In case we weren’t already clear on that. Oh, and thanks for the postcard, by the way. Nice to know you’re thinking about us while you’re on vacation in Alpha Centauri. I bet you’re banging **alien** hookers there, you loser. _

_Kiss my ass motherfucker, me._

_Oh, and P.S. I hope the blow there **sucks**._

He re-sends it about twenty or thirty times, figures he’s got unlimited postage so why the hell not? 

He’s squinting at some cartoon movie in the darkness of the living room a while later when there’s a knock on the door. He frowns, wondering who’d be knocking on their door at this hour. He picks up his bottle and stops to grab the gun tucked into the desk and goes to answer it.

“All this and you’re still not happy, Dean?”

And for everything he’s been through, even for the mental fuck you of a postcard he just sent up, Dean is still surprised to see Christopher Lee standing on his doorstep. 

“You… could hear me?”

“You wore that amulet constantly for so many years, it’s like you’ve got a damned beacon straight to my mind.”

Dean suddenly realizes that God knows everything. _Everything_.

“What? You think you fucking your brother shocks me? You have read the Old Testament, right? Lot’s daughters got him drunk so he could impregnate them. Incest was old news before the Book of Genesis was finished.”

And God is… standing on his doorstep, telling him that…

Dean can’t even begin to process that, so he decides to ignore it, instead. “You came halfway across the universe to tell me stop bitching?”

“Three quarters of the way.”

“And when, exactly, did you start giving a fuck?” Dean asks, angry, because seriously, fuck this guy.

“Well, let’s see,” God responds with a tilt of his head, tone dripping acid. “When I brought you back from hell? When I put you and Sam on a plane instead of leaving you there for Lucifer to find when he got out?” God strokes a hand along his beard. “When I brought Castiel back from the dead? Twice? Oh, wait,” he says, letting go of his beard and holding up his hand, “maybe when I killed all the Leviathans and saved your lives, took all the monsters and left you in peace.”

Dean grits his teeth together, jaw clenching. “You could have stopped it all a long time ago.”

“And if I had…” God says, looking him dead in the eye, “would you be any happier?”

“Screw you. You know what’s going on in my head, you tell me.”

God shakes his head and sighs heavily, exasperated. “You’re like a baby. A big, mopey baby, who won’t stop crying. Christ.”

Dean stares at God in drunken awe for a moment.

“He’s my son,” God shrugs. “If I can’t take his name in vain, who can?”

Yeah, Dean’s still stuck on staring, but it makes a certain kind of sense.

“What do you really want?” and the sincerity in God’s voice lays him bare, leaves him wordless, defenseless. But it doesn’t matter; he’s God, and he hears Dean anyway.

“Just for you, Dean,” God says, and it occurs to Dean just then that God’s really fucking scary. He’s not sure if it’s God, Christopher Lee, or the amount of alcohol he’s had, but all of a sudden he’s terrified.

And then God disappears.

He stands there in trepidation for long moments, waiting for something to happen. After a few minutes, when nothing does, he sighs.

“Thanks,” Dean mutters, disgusted as he closes the door.

 

 

He’s fast asleep on the couch when something wakes him. He isn’t sure what it is, TV throwing shadows all over the living room, and he can’t hear anything except the volume turned down low, but he lies there, ears pricked for any sound, unease running through him, hunter senses on edge.

The front door opens a moment later, and he’s up on his feet in a second, gun pulled into his hand from the coffee table where he’d left it earlier.

Sunny’s laughter cuts off in mid-sound when she spots Dean, blue eyes going wide, Castiel standing next to her, looking at him, slightly puzzled.

“Did we startle you, Dean?” he asks, like he’s completely unaware that Sunny’s frozen with surprise and fear next to him.

Dean looks at them for a moment and then tosses the gun down on the coffee table, running a hand through his tousled hair. “Yeah. Sorry,” he says, looking specifically at Sunny. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Just… you can never be too careful.”

She nods after a moment and relaxes a notch.

“Sorry,” he says again. “I’ll just…” He points to kitchen and heads there without another word to grab himself a beer. He figures he’ll go around through the kitchen through the dining room and then creep up the stairs just inside the living room, trying not to disturb Castiel and Sunny. He’s got the beer in his hand and is in the process of doing just that when the door in the dining room that leads to the garage opens, and Sam walks in.

They look at each other for a moment, and Dean wishes he had something, anything to say. Sam opens his mouth—

The sound of glass exploding in the living room is almost deafening. It startles both of them for a moment, and then they’re both moving. Sunny’s screaming from somewhere inside the living room by the time they get there, and Dean stops just inside the doorway to the living room, trying to figure out exactly what he’s looking at.

“They’re… Those are…”

“Garden gnomes,” Sam says from beside him, sounding as shocked as Dean feels. 

They’re the garden gnomes from Bob and Jeanette’s front yard next door, the ones with their pointed hats in shades of green and red, their vests and belts and beards with their creepy smiles—only they’re seven feet fucking _tall_ , wielding rakes and shovels, hats scattered all over the floor because the ceiling isn’t tall enough to allow for them. There are seven of them, converging on Castiel kneeling in front of Sunny, who’s screaming like an actress straight out of a horror movie.

 _This is stupid_ , Dean thinks, and yells to get their attention, already running to the coffee table, grabbing for the gun. A gnome with a rake swings at him and he has to dodge instead, rake hitting the coffee table and sending the gun flying. The coffee table splits in two like a log under an axe, splinters filling the air.

Stupid as it is, he’s gonna be just as dead if that thing lands a blow on him. He tries running for the gun again, and the rake cuts him off, sends him diving and rolling out of the way. He kneels up, grabs one of the wing chairs once he’s out of the way, turning it over to shield him—and it shatters with enough force to send splinters deep into Dean’s face, chair breaking apart and leaving him exposed. The thing’s got him pinned down, and he glances around, sees Sam swinging a bat at another gnome, Castiel and Sunny huddled in the far corner of the living room, out of harm’s way for the moment.

Dean hears the front door fly open and hit the wall, and a hole appears through the chest of the gnome in time with a shotgun blast going off. Dean hits the ground, looking up from underneath the cover of his arms over his head. The gnome turns around and another hole appears in the back of its head, ceramic shards scattered everywhere. When even that fails to slow it down, two more shots take it through the knees, and the thing finally collapses to the ground, crumbling into fragments in a cloud of ceramic dust. Dean can see who fired the shots now.

“Esmerelda?” Dean asks, staring at the old woman in disbelief.

She’s wearing a silk nightgown and she’s got a regular gun in her hand now, shotgun on the floor next to her feet. 

“I could use some help,” she says, turning to shoot out the knees of a gnome in a green vest wielding a shovel.

Dean’s on his feet in an instant, getting the gun from the far end of the living room. It’s got six shots, but he’s firing bullets, and any bullet he fires is going to go straight through the knees of the gnome advancing on Castiel and Sunny and right into them.

God dammit.

He looks around for something else to use, spots the gigantic canning spoon sticking up out of the box it had arrived in—the one they’d never unpacked because they hadn’t figured out what to do with it—and makes a break for it, grabbing the spoon and aiming for the back of one of the gnome’s knees.

It doesn’t work as well as a bullet, that’s for goddamned sure, chip of ceramic shattering off, crack appearing across the back, and he hits it again, figuring he’s got time for one more strike before the thing can turn on him.

The second strike breaks through the back of its knee, but the front is still holding strong, and it turns, looking down at him, winding up to hit him with a shovel.

“Cas! Sunny! Hit the floor!” he yells, dropping the spoon and falling back, bringing up the gun. Thankfully, Cas and Sunny hear him, and he sees them go down just before he squeezes the trigger, once, twice, shattering the thing’s legs. It falls forward, shovel and all threatening to land on top of Dean and he runs backward as fast he can, narrowly avoiding the shovel as it lands beside him, side of it sinking deep into the hardwood floor.

“Get to the basement,” Dean shouts to everyone, running through the remains of the gnome, grabbing Castiel by the shoulder. “The panic room, now.”

The look Castiel gives him is desperate, lids wide around his blue eyes, and it’s then that Dean looks down, sees Sunny lying unconscious against the floor, deep gash across her forehead.

The shrapnel… shit. Dean swallows hard against the taste of guilt. “Carry her,” he tells Castiel,” I’ll clear you a path.”

By the time they all get to the kitchen, between him and Esmerelda, they’ve killed five gnomes, and Sam and Esmerelda take down a sixth between his baseball bat and her final bullet.

That leaves them with nothing against the seventh one. It can’t fit through the doorway to the kitchen, though, not without a lot of bending and squirming and them hacking at it with their empty guns and kitchen utensils, sending it back. Dean’s starting to think they can chip away at this thing—literally—until it’s done.

The thing backs up, considering them with its beady eyes and creepy smile, and Dean can see what it’s got in its hands—the spading fork from their shed. Fucker. He really wishes he had two more bullets.

“I thought God took away everything,” Sam says.

 _He did,_ , Dean thinks, and on the heels of that, _This is all my fault._

But… Giant garden gnomes? Seriously?

“Dale told me some crazy stories, but this…” Esmerelda says, shaking her head. Some of her hair has escaped the clip at the back of her head, falling in strands of silver and white around her face.

“You knew?” Dean asks, surprised and somehow not, all at once.

“We were very close,” Esmerelda nods, not quite looking at him.

Dean gets it, even from those few words. Her and Dale… and he’d told _her_ the truth, the way he could never tell Melinda, the same way no one would ever be Carl for her. 

“How do you know about it?” she asks.

Hell, at this point, he might as well tell her the truth. No sense in lying. “We used to hunt these kinds of things, before. That was what we did. But they’re all supposed to gone now.”

“If that’s true, why are there things here, now?”

Dean considers explaining about God and his unspoken wish for things to be like they were when they were on the road, and then decides that would pretty much put the final nail in whatever hope for domestic bliss they might have left after this. “It’s complicated.”

Three more gnomes come in through the broken living room window behind the one remaining, and Dean sighs. “Shit. All of you, get to the basement and shut the door. I’ll cover us.”

“With what?” Sam demands.

“Fucking go,” he shouts as the gnomes hit the wall between the kitchen and living room as one, whole room shuddering, plaster shivering down from the ceiling. He turns and shoves his brother away. This is his fault, and he’ll see it through. “Get them down to the panic room. Make sure they’re safe.”

“Not without you.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Dean promises.

“I’m not leaving unless you come with us.”

“Sam,” Dean grates out. “Just let me--”

The spading fork he’d dug the garden with thrusts through the doorway, pierces his throat, skewers him through the collarbone and his shoulder.

“ _Dean_!” He hears Sam shout.

The world goes slow and gray, sounds dulling until Dean’s left in silence, world a blur of motion around him. Sam wrapping his arms around Dean, pulling him backward, wall shaking and tumbling down in clouds of drywall dust, gnomes struggling through it. They’re huge, towering over him as he’s dragged backward, and he can see the one with the spading fork turn, lifting it to stab him again.

“No.” He can barely hear Sam, vision going watery and thin as his brother gets in front of him, holding up something huge and thick like a shield. The spading fork punctures through it, taking Sam through the shoulder, and he shoves the shield off, yanking from the tine stuck inside him, leaving the gnome with a refrigerator door stuck thick and heavy on the end of his weapon. 

Sam’s hands are on him then, dragging him backward through the wreckage of the kitchen, and Dean wants to ask if Sam’s all right, can feel the warmth of his brother’s blood against his back, but he can’t seem to speak, can’t seem to move to help Sam at all.

He’s vaguely aware of the warmth pulsing against his chest, the pain in his throat, feels the world spiraling away.

Sam drags him through the doorway to the panic room, letting go long enough to get it shut, slamming it closed around the empty, ceramic hand reaching through. Pieces of it scatter down like rain across Dean, and then Sam’s there, kneeling down next to him, the look in his eyes feverish, panicked, tears welling and spilling over.

“Dean.”

It’s the only sound Dean hears clearly in the moment before the world fades, and he wishes he hadn’t been so stupid, hadn’t done this, wants to say he’s sorry, but he can’t say a word, can only reach for Sam’s face weakly with one hand.

“Don’t leave me, Dean.” The words are garbled, Sam’s voice spun through a garbage disposal that pulls Dean down.

“Sam.” It’s a long breath of a word, the last that leaves his lungs before they go still.

 

*

 

It takes Dean a while to realize what’s happening, long seconds to realize his body is bleeding out on the floor of the panic room. Sam is bent over him, Dean’s upper body in his lap, Esmerelda kneeling beside him, her face knotted tight with sorrow. Castiel bends over Sunny, sweeping back a lock of blonde hair from her bleeding brow, tears in his eyes as he looks over at Dean’s face.

And he’s… this is… how?

The face of the man standing next to Dean is wrinkled with time, but his eyes are dark, sharp and bright. Dean recognizes him instantly.

“Hello, Dean,” Death says, tone reproving.

“You’re…” Dean tries to say, and then tries again. “I thought God…”

“I told you in Chicago, Dean. I will reap even God one day. He has no power over me.” Eyes so brown they’re almost black, held on him steadily, unblinking, and Dean doesn’t feel any less afraid of him than he did back in Chicago that first time.

He feels the words sink in, slowly trying to take hold. “So I’m… Dead. Like dead, dead. For good?”

“You expected me to pass over you?” Death asks, gaze scrutinizing him as he tilts his head down at Dean’s dead body. “You wore the ring, Dean. You know more than any other human what happens when you die. _Why_ you must die.”

“In the middle of a small town… stuck through the throat by a giant garden gnome with the spading fork I busted my ass to dig the garden with? This is how I go out? Seriously?” Dean asks, incredulous.

“I’ve reaped worse,” Death replies.

He probably has… but…

“But… Sam,” Dean whispers, barely able to look at where his brother is curled across him, sobbing and wounded.

“Is not on my list today.”

And, no. No. He can’t leave Sam behind, can’t leave Sam like this. Sam and the life he wanted them to have here, their stupid antique collection with the fucking spoons and tea set and Precious Moments statues, his goddamned roosters comforter, their invasive neighbors. The feeling rises up, hard and certain and he’s surprised by the way it makes him feel, how _attached_ he is to all of it. Sam most of all, but he can’t leave any of it. Castiel, Sunny and Esmerelda, the fucking settee, the stupid garden, the wind chimes on the front porch. Dale’s memories left behind, the memories he and Sam have made here. He can’t leave. Can’t leave this _house_ and all it means, everything inside it.

“He wanted us to have a life together,” Dean whispers.

“Sam will follow you soon enough.”

Dean blinks, lump in his throat almost choking him. “The wound isn’t fatal.”

“But nonetheless.”

“No,” Dean breathes. If the wound doesn’t kill Sam… if Sam lives through this… “Why does he die?”

“Dean,” Death says, invoking that tone of disapproval again. “You’re not much, but you’ve got a brain of sorts. Use it.”

“I need to know why he dies.”

“Put yourself in his shoes, as you once put yourself in mine.”

He does. He thinks of Sam, of being Sam, watching Dean die again. Forever, this time. Thinks of himself in the same position. How much it would break him, kill him to know he could never get Sam back. But Sam isn’t him, Sam could have a life, a future without him.

“I said put yourself in _his_ place,” Death comments, wry.

His awareness slides, and for a moment, he _is_ Sam, inside Sam’s head. Looking down at his own broken body in Sam’s arms, feeling what Sam is feeling. And the truth there… it burns, all the way to the core. Sends him reeling back and away with how much he understands.

_You are soulmates._

He didn’t know… Sam had tried to tell him, but he didn’t really know until now. He didn’t get how it would be the same. He knows living wouldn’t mean anything without Sam. And none of it’s going to mean anything to Sam after he’s gone. He knows that now. Sam really would rather die than live without him… than even live apart from him. He can hear it in the way Sam’s grieving, saw it written all over his brother’s face when he could stand to look long enough, felt it inside his mind.

Dean should have listened, should have believed him, too caught up in his own issues. He hadn’t thought he’d be good enough for Sam, that maybe if they could get back out on the road, hunt things together again… that he could keep Sam close without Sam ever finding out the truth about Dean. That Sam would never have to be disappointed in him. If they were just brothers hunting monsters, Dean could never fail Sam like he can if they do this. But they’ve been way past ‘just brothers’ for a long time, even longer than they’ve been fucking. Maybe always. Dean can see that now.

It’s so simple, looking at it now in the afterlife, no choices left.

Maybe Sam’s not on Death’s list today, but without any magic or angels, without any hope of getting Dean back… a week, a month, maybe a year from now…

How long would Dean last? How much longer would he have lasted with Lisa without the hope of getting Sam back?

Dean shakes his head, vision blurring as his eyes well.

_You reach a point in life where you have to calculate the odds and take a chance._

He should have taken the chance. 

_You never know how much time you’ve got. Best make it count while you can._

He should have just given in to what he wanted instead of bitching to God about what God left him with. Fuck, all the time he wasted. All the life he wasted by dying, when he could have had this for years. And he was never going to want anything else. All he’s ever wanted is Sam. All that’s ever mattered is Sam. He just didn’t know how much… what it meant to Sam. Not until now. 

Lisa was right, they do have the most crazy, tangled up thing probably anyone’s ever seen. But she was wrong, too, he _can_ be happy with Sam around, thinks maybe the unhappiness between them over the years was because there was always this, unresolved between them.

Maybe they could have been happy all along. If he’d known sooner, if he wasn’t dead and it wasn’t too fucking late.

“I can’t go.” Dean’s voice is quiet, and he can feel the way his throat swells around it. “I need another chance."

“You think you have a choice,” Death replies.

“I know I have a choice,” Dean says, eyes locked on Sam. “Tessa told me how it worked years ago.”

“Not anymore. God changed the rules.”

Dean’s eyes fly to look at Death. “I’m _staying_. I don’t give a fuck what rules God changed. If I have to be a ghost, I’ll be a fucking ghost.”

“There are no ghosts, Dean.”

Dean presses his lips together in a firm line and grits his teeth. “I don’t care. I’m not leaving him.”

Death pauses, studying him for a moment. “So much self-importance,” he remarks, and then tilts his head. “But for such an insignificant creature, you do seem to get your way more often than not.”

Dean blinks, trying to understand, spark of hope flaring in his heart. “So I’m not… you’re not… going to take me?”

“No,” Death says, thin lips pursing. “Not today.”

Dean stands there over his dead body, over his sobbing brother, taking a moment to process that. “What?”

“Of all the humans I’ve reaped, you and your brother have proved the most difficult to hold on to. This time is no different.”

“But… how?” 

“This is not the natural order,” Death says, turning half away from him, gnarled hand leaning on his cane. “You should have died half a dozen times before this, but those moments have already been changed. Now, here, this is not your time. This is God’s doing.”

It takes a few long seconds for Dean to gather any kind of reply. “And you can… what? Just defy him?”

Death turns on him, fixing his intent gaze on Dean. “All this time, and you understand so little. I serve nothing, save the order of things.” Death steps closer to him, chin tilting downward as he stares up at Dean with those depthless eyes. “I am not God’s _maid_ , Dean. He can clean up his own messes.”

Dead or not, Dean takes a step back and swallows nervously before he nods.

Death tilts his head slightly to one side, expression unchanging. “I trust you’ve learned your lesson.”

Dean manages to nod again.

“Enjoy your life, Dean. I won’t see you again for some time, but I will see you.”

Death turns then, walking up the stairs of the basement, and Dean watches until his feet disappear beyond the ceiling, until the sounds of his footsteps grow distant.

“So I take it you’ve had enough of what you “wanted”?” God asks as he appears next to Dean, and Dean can hear the quotation marks in his voice.

He curls his lips between his teeth, eyes closing for a moment. 

“Yeah,” he answers, gruff but honest as he opens his eyes, nods.

“And if I put it back the way it was…?”

“Never another word,” Dean answers, eyes fixed on Sam.

“They won’t remember, but you will.”

“I’ll deal.”

“Good,” God says, lifting one hand. “You’ve proved interesting, Dean, even beyond your purpose.”

“I’m so glad,” Dean replies, rolling his eyes, sarcasm dripping from his voice. 

“Ungrateful asshole,” God mutters and snaps his fingers together.

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

  


He’s fast asleep on the couch when something wakes him. The TV is throwing shadows all over the living room, and he can’t hear anything except the volume turned down low, and it’s all here—the settee whole and perfect, coffee table in one piece, the doilies settled on the tables, garden paintings on the wall.

The front door opens a moment later, and he’s up on his feet in a second, smiling wide as Sunny and Castiel come through the front door, laughing.

“Did we startle you, Dean?” Castiel asks, tilting his head to one side.

“No.” Dean shakes his head and bites down against his smile. “No. You’re good.”

They _are_ good, alive and unhurt, and happy.

“I’ll just…” he says and points in the direction of the kitchen, heading there without another word. He stops briefly and leans his forehead against the fridge and just breathes for a few seconds. It’s all here. He didn’t fuck it up, he didn’t lose it. 

He hears the dining room door open and turns, walking toward the sound.

He and Sam look at each other for a long moment, and Dean’s got more than he knows how to say inside him, unable to get out a single word. 

Sam opens his mouth, and Dean knows whatever he’s going to say is going to be bad, be about what they argued about earlier. When the living room window doesn’t shatter, Dean cuts him off.

“I’m sorry.” 

Sam looks at him in surprise, anger slowly draining into something softer. “No,” he sighs. “I’m sorry. You didn’t wanna do this, Dean. The house… with me… I shouldn’t have made you.”

“Stop,” Dean says, shaking his head. He doesn’t want to hear the guilt in his brother’s voice for _him_. “You didn’t make me do anything. I was… stupid. And I’m sorry.”

“And you’re not stupid anymore?” Sam asks, turning one cheek slightly toward Dean and half side-eying him with a frown, like he’s trying to understand what Dean means.

“A little less stupid,” Dean corrects. “Less stupid enough.” _I hope._

“Okay,” Sam nods, like that cleared up absolutely nothing for him, and Dean wishes he could just let Sam inside his head for a minute like Death had let him inside Sam’s. Let Sam see everything that happened. 

But he doesn’t have that option, so he’s going to have to try to explain it. “Can we… go somewhere else? It’s kind of a long story, and Sunny and Cas are in the living room.”

“Okay, where?”

Dean leads Sam down to the basement and they both sit on the edge of the bed, far enough apart that another person could fit in the space between them. Dean starts at the beginning and explains straight through, Sam’s eyes growing wider and wider until finally Dean gets to the part where he died, and Sam’s jaw clenches, flexing. 

“You really are a fucking moron,” Sam shakes his head, disgusted.

Dean stumbles a bit after that, fumbling for ways to explain to Sam, staring at the floor exclusively now instead of looking at his brother. He keeps his head down and tells as much of the truth as he can bear, all the way through to where Sam walked into the dining room for the second time, and then he stops, heart beating too fast in his chest, wishing like hell Sam would hurry up and say something.

Sam’s quiet for so long that Dean feels like he’s going to come apart at the seams, and then finally, he says, “It’s true. What you saw… in my head. But I thought you knew that already, Dean.”

“I think I didn’t believe it.”

“Because you didn’t think you were worth it.”

Dean’s still not sure he thinks he’s worth it, but Sam thinks so, and that’s gonna have to be good enough.

“So all it took was you dying to change your mind?” Sam asks. “Jesus, Dean. If God hadn’t… if he’d left you dead…”

“I know,” Dean nods.

“Yeah,” Sam says after a moment. “I guess you do.”

They both sit there for a while, like Sam doesn’t know what to say any more than Dean does. Finally Dean takes a breath and takes the plunge. 

“So you still wanna do this thing? With me?”

“I didn’t change my mind in the last six hours,” Sam says, droll. “Yeah. I still ‘wanna do this thing’. With you.” He pauses for a moment, and then says, “But I want to do it at your pace, Dean. I don’t want to make you feel like you need to back off.”

Dean shakes his head. “No backing off. Not ever again. Not after…” he trails off, swallowing as he lets the sentence hang there.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.” He pauses, mouth suddenly dry, and he has to peel his tongue from the roof of his mouth to say the next words. “But there’s no going back, Sam. Not for me. Not with you. If you think you might ever change your mind…”

“There’s never gonna be anyone else but you, Dean.”

Dean nods, and he doesn’t understand exactly why Sam feels that way, but he believes it. He also feels like he did when he was thirteen and asked someone to be his girlfriend for the first (and only) time, which is kind of ridiculous, but still…

“So what now?” Sam asks.

This, Dean knows how to deal with. Dean turns, slides into his brother’s space and grabs him by the hair, pulling him into a kiss. It doesn’t even feel strange, the way Sam opens to him hungrily, tongue sliding inside his mouth, hands coming up to grab Dean by the waist, yank him in closer.

“Well,” Dean whispers, smirking against his brother’s mouth, “I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure this is the part where we have epic make-up sex.”

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

EPILOGUE

 

It takes weeks, Sam slowly moving into Dean’s room, dresser drawers and closet and everything filling with Sam. Sam sleeping in his bed, fucking him into the mattress or Dean fucking him, it doesn’t matter. They don’t talk about it, just let it happen until it’s ‘their’ room, and when Sam tells Cas he can have the room at the top of the stairs, none of them even blink. 

Though Castiel does do a chair dance in celebration.

Castiel does smooth out after a while, emotions finally lessening, but he’s still more of a big kid let loose on the world than anything else, and he makes Dean grin, makes Sunny laugh. Castiel begins cooking for them, mostly without destroying the kitchen, and he gets pretty good at it. Though all the food in the world never seems to put a dent in his love for popcorn.

Dean still drinks sometimes, but he drinks less than he has in years, wanting to be _here_ , instead of somewhere else.

 

*

 

One day, in late June, Dean spends a day going through Dale’s things. He looks at every photograph, reads each letter, lock of hair smoothed between his fingertips before he repacks them all slowly. He sits there for a while, arm stretched across the closed box, thumb stoking along its edge.

He carries the box to the upstairs storage space, setting it down carefully, leaving it behind with one last stroke of his hand.

That’s the day he goes to Esmerelda’s and asks her about Dale, the day he drives alone to the cemetery where Dale is buried.

 _I hope you found her_ , Dean thinks, laying flowers across the headstone. Bends his head and curls his fingers against the warm grass. 

_Rest in peace, Dale._

 

*

 

Dean stands on the front porch, summer in full bloom. There are tomatoes and cucumbers, squash growing in the backyard, their neighbors working all around, mowing their lawns, trimming their bushes, running after their children, washing their cars in the glare of sunlight. 

Dean takes a sip from his coffee mug and leans against the railing of the porch, wind chimes singing out gentle musical notes in the summer breeze.

The door opens behind him, and Sam walks out, sliding up behind Dean, arms circling his waist.

“Come inside,” Sam whispers, lips pressing against Dean’s throat.

Dean turns inside Sam’s embrace, pulling him in with a smile.

“Yeah,” he nods. “Let’s go home.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CREDITS:

Huge thanks to the_stowaway who was there through every step of this fic and contributed so many ideas to it, as well as beta’d the whole thing for me! She really lived this one with me. Not to mention, she did the meticulously detailed, FABULOUS floor plans of Casa de Winchester! Aren’t they amazing? Thanks so much for all the time and effort you put in, and the support you provided!

Thanks also to saucynewf, who did a test read so I could ping her for feedback. Thank you, baby!

Gigantic, momentous tons of LOVE for my amazing artist, lightthesparks. She really “got” the story, and every piece of artwork was pitch perfect. I couldn’t be more over the moon about the amount of awesome artwork she did for this story. I’m seriously blown away and feel very lucky. I still cackle every time I look at the poster. Their FAAAAACES! :D Thanks for being so easy to work with, hon! Everyone else, go tell her how awesome she is! [Full Art Post with Icons, Wallpapers and More!](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/85086.html)

Credit to redteekal for the idea of all the supernatural evil going away/God sweeping the plate clean. Thank you for the inspiration and for taking the time to share your thoughts on their careers with me in depth. I'm sorry I didn't get as deep into their careers as I'd initially thought I would.

Last but not least, thanks to all you folks at who make this thing happen every year!

  


  
  
**~~SCENE~~ NOTE CARDS AFTER THE CREDITS:**

Sam does go to school, working in hospitals as soon as he can. He pursues his career all the way to earning a Masters in nursing, and becomes a Certified Trauma Nurse at the hospital in Sioux Falls. He’s damned good at his job, just like Dean knew he would be, and eventually becomes a head nurse during his shifts in the trauma ward.

Dean meets Jed, the owner of the gun shop in Sioux Falls while picking up supplies to clean his gun. Jed takes an instant liking to Dean and his extensive knowledge of guns and hires him on at the gun shop. A few years later, when Jed’s ready to retire to Florida, Jed sells the shop to Dean, and by then, Dean knows the business end of things. Sam suggests Dean take some business management courses, and Dean decides to take his advice. The gun shop remains as successful under Dean as it did under Jed.

Castiel goes to cooking school to become a chef, and eventually he settles down with Sunny right across the street from Sam and Dean. When they get married, popcorn is on the menu at the reception—several different flavors, in fact, made by Cas, himself. A few years after he gets his degree in cooking, he and Sunny open a restaurant in Sioux Falls.

Sam and Dean stay in Ernest, and when they do decide to get married, it’s done quietly, with no fuss. It’s not an incredibly romantic affair, done mostly for the benefits, but neither one of them ever takes their rings off—unless they’re visiting Bobby.

And they don’t always live happily ever after, but most of the time, they live more happily than either of them ever thought they could be.

  
  


END

  
  


  


  
  



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